On the days prior to our departures (the ones from Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Mindelo), we all entered a frenetic state of preparation. Once the date of departure is set, countless of small details have to be accounted for, ranging from food, water and gas to contents to be downloaded for the long streak of offline attention opened to us. I want to briefly touch upon this particular kind of frenzy.
One of the claims that I would fall under prior to our departure was the idea that a long crossing would «force boredom». Indeed, we would spend more than 18 days in total «stuck» on a fairly small embarcation with a crew of 8, deprived from external connections (which has now become very extraordinary in our connected societies).
At shore, I would celebrate this opportunity to face boredom as one is never really bored when he or she knows how to observe. This is taught as one of the core benefit of meditation, being able to spot a wealth of details and information as part of a «present moment session». I would also be in the expectation of such opportunity for boredom to test the validity of this claim and simply out of sheer curiosity.
The crossings offered just that, liminal morning hours during night watches where duty offers an opportunity to «be bored» but also long post-lunch afternoons in napping mood where time extends.
However, I must confess (at this point of our long crossing - we’re the 10th of march, 5 days after our departure from Mindelo and about a week away from Saint Martin our point of arrival) that I didn’t really leave the door open for real boredom.
As mentioned, the hours prior to our departure were dedicated to frantic preparations. In my case that also meant a wealth of downloads from books to podcasts in the expectation of delightful streaks of offline attention. There lies my contradiction: longing for true boredom while shielding myself from it with a bulk of «boredom killers».
To be fair, these contents are more than mere ways to trump boredom they were part of an evergrowing personal corpus of knowledge that I would humbly try to process. But still they contradicted, to an extent, with my appeal for true boredom. They may even have tarnished my experience of our departure from Santa Cruz. Indeed, leaving the harbor doesn’t mean being out of connection straight away. I couldn’t help myself but to fill the first nautical miles of our trip downloading last bits of website and books I could think of…
What is to take from this episode? First that offline attention truly is a blessing, at least for me. It opens up mindspace for a set of actions that would usually be over-ruled by connected activities.
Second that true boredom is not an easy feat to achieve. Reasons motivating it should be clear however, is it for curiosity? Mental wash-up? Just as a challenge?
I would personally be genuinely curious about my reaction to true boredom and what it could bring it terms of insights. It might be that experiencing boredom is not what’s important here, the reaction to boredom is. In my case it translated in a somewhat unhealthy preparation, not out of fear but out of excitement. I would still believe than a balance can be found between preparation and raw boredom experience.