Boredom Is a Spiritual Discipline
I can’t remember the last time I was bored for longer than a minute. Waiting for coffee, stopped at a red light, standing in the hallway while the kettle boils, my hand finds the phone before my mind has registered that nothing is happening. Boredom used to be weather. Now it’s something I can switch off. That sounds like progress, and in some ways it is. But nearly every contemplative tradition I know of treats the dull stretch as a door you’re supposed to walk through, and I’ve been wondering what happens to a person who never gets near it. ...