Dear True Self,
I find myself bored with life lately. Everything seems so dull, the same. Even trying new things I have just this sense of “meh” about it all. How can I become more enthusiastic about life?
Sincerely,
Life’s a Bore
Dear LAB,
First I must ask you, where is your boredom happening? Is it the boredom with life, or the boredom with yourself?
If you think it is life that is the source of your boredom, then it is time for a wake up call.
There is nothing boring about life. There is also nothing exciting about life. Whether you are excited or bored is only happening because of how you decide to be in any moment.
Why is it that one person can be absolutely over the moon when flying in a plane, while another is terrified, and another is bored or indifferent? Is it the plane’s fault, or the act of flying that is the source of their experience?
Each person chooses their own internal experience. If you go around in life expecting external situations to be the source of your happiness, then you are just a reactive human being. There is no choice, you just keep on being triggered by life, a slave to it’s cause and effect.
But if you can make yourself so that no matter what happens in life, you are the way you wish to be, then you are in command of your own life! Tell me, if you were in command of how you experience life, wouldn’t you want to choose the highest level of experience for yourself?
See, this is all a matter of perspective. You obviously don’t want the worst level of experience in your life, or a dull level of experience, or even a satisfactory level of experience. Your very nature is that you will always want to expand the beauty in your life. When you reach one peak, you will soon long for the next.
But you are not involved in life. You are simply coasting, one moment to the next. You have become so bored that even when pleasant things happen you don’t feel anything.
But I promise you, if life came and started grinding you a bit, squeezing you and kicking you, suddenly you would not be bored. You would be miserable, but certainly it would not be boring.
When boredom sets into you like this, you seem to forget that you are capable of overcoming it. When life is miserable you are clearly capable of being totally involved in your misery. So what, can you only be involved in life when it is miserable?
It seems that most people can only know pure involvement when they utterly sad, destroyed, scared. It is a shame, because the same is possible with joy, beauty, freedom.
Boredom is inevitable when you are not willing to be involved. The easiest way to be involved is to start paying attention to all that is worth celebrating.
Life itself is a celebration. All around you, there is so much activity – the sun is rising, the people you care about are all here today, you are alive today even! The birds are flying, the trees are breathing, everywhere you look, some piece of life has overcome great strife to be thriving in this moment.
You take for granted all the things that are happening right now. Is it not worth celebrating these things? Your aliveness, other’s aliveness, all of it?
Maybe you feel like you are incapable of celebrating all that life has to offer. But you were once a young child, and all of life was a celebration. Every little pebble you saw was worth looking at. Like this you moved through life, with a sense of wonder about it all, and every moment you learned something new, and it was worth celebrating.
Do you think that now that you are older you’ve got it all figured out? You’ve seen pebbles too many times, so you know all there is to know? You could spend 10,000 lifetimes looking at even one pebble and not know it in it’s entirety.
Do you see why this is a matter of perspective? Life has not suddenly taken away opportunities from you. It is not hiding the interesting things from you, or taken away your capacity to be involved, or your ability to be curious and celebratory.
All of life is interesting damnit! You’re bored? Of what I say?! What in this existence is possibly boring to you?
Nothing about life is boring. It is all magnificent if you only paid attention.
The issue is not with life, it is only with you.
The only way out of your boredom is to start living. You don’t have to suddenly start dancing in the street, but it sure would help.
You have all these rules in your life of the way you feel you must behave. But the truth is you can be any way you want. You want to sing on the train? You want to smile at the trees? You want to dress silly? Whatever you want, you can do, there is no one stopping you. However you think an enthusiastic person would be in life, you can be like that!
You don’t have to do any of these things however. Celebrating life does not mean that you have to take any external action. Just in your own heart, you own experience, celebrate each moment. It can be entirely internal, because everything is only happening within you anyway.
As a human you have the ability to feel either end of the spectrum with life. You can feel total apathy or total wonder. It is entirely up to you. It’s not that one end is better or worse than the other. It is just that life has given you as a human the power to choose how your life is.
Just that fact alone – that life is entirely your making – that is worth celebrating. You need no other reason to celebrate.
If you can make the quality of celebration a part of who you are, in every step you take, there will be no question of boredom. Don’t try to be enthusiastic because you will need some reason. Just for no reason at all other than you are alive, celebrate!
Basically what I am saying is just do anything. Pick anything, and celebrate it. What have you got to lose; your way clearly isn’t working.
Try it. Go for a walk and every step treat it like it is a celebration. By the end of that walk, you’ll either be smiling, laughing, or crying. But you won’t be bored, and you will see how stupid it is to choose to be bored when you could literally choose anything else.
Life is ticking away, don’t wait until you’re dying or dead to suddenly want to live.
With gratitude,
Your True Self
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Dear True Self 