Stop checking your phone
Why you're better off being bored
All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone
—Blaise Pascal
Once when I was about 5 years old, I was visiting my grandparents at their house and I had nothing to do. I clearly remember sitting on the couch in their upstairs living room and staring blankly into the wallpaper in the corner of the room, tracing the patterns with my eyes and not thinking about anything in particular.
Hey! What are you doing!? Meditating?
All of a sudden, my reverie was interrupted by my grandfather Bryce, who happened to be sitting in his customary armchair beside the couch.
“What’s Meditating?” I asked him.
He thought about it for a moment, then replied
It’s thinking about nothing.
I gave this new information some serious consideration, before gravely responding to him that yes, I was meditating. He seemed quite pleased by my answer, and went back to working on his crossword.
Thus began my lifelong fascination with meditation. There were a few diversions along the way, of course.
At one point, I became convinced that levitating and meditating were somehow intrinsically linked. If I could only sit cross legged, close my eyes and find the right pattern of breathing and chanting “OM”, I believed I would one day open my eyes and find myself floating 6 inches off the ground. Of course, that never materialised.
I read some children’s fantasy books by Tamara Pierce, where the main characters could harness magic powers by concentrating and breathing in specific cadences. Breath in for a count of seven, hold for a count of seven, breath out for a count of seven, hold for a count of seven. I would fall asleep practicing these breathing patterns.
As a competitive swimmer, controlled breathing patterns took on a purpose. Three strokes, breath. Three strokes, breath. The many hours spent in training were often exercises in mind-numbing boredom. Face in the water, clouded goggles, a coach pushing you to swim faster, and endless, monotonous laps back and forth, staring at the bottom of the pool.
When I graduated from university, I took the summer off before starting my first job. During this time, my sister and I went to a 10-day Vipassana Meditation course. This was where I truly learned how to meditate. Or put another way, how to be present with yourself, even in moments of extreme boredom.
Boredom, see, is a very unpleasant state to be in. It’s undertaking a dreary monotonous chore, with no hope of escape. It’s feeling trapped and figity, itching for something, anything more interesting than what is currently going on. It’s when no matter what you do, you just can’t bring yourself to focus on the task at hand.
When a person is bored, their brain is actually very active. Neuroscientists use the term Default Mode Network (DMN) to refer to the regions of the brain that are active when a person is not focused on the outside world, is in a state of “wakeful rest”, or is daydreaming or mind wandering. This region of the brain is also found to be active when one is thinking about themselves and others, going over the past and planning for the future.
Our brains are wired to activate these regions, and it’s not always a pleasant experience. How often have you replayed a past interaction in your mind, and wished you could have reacted differently? Or worried about the future, running over different possible scenarios, endlessly with no resolution?
It’s no wonder that people turn to distractions in order to escape from the noise. Boredom used to be an impetus to change something about your current situation. Often, boredom comes right before an intense burst of creativity, or a eureka moment for something you’ve had on your mind for a while.
The problem is that it is now altogether too easy to tune it out by just picking up your phone and getting numb with a few finger taps and thumb swipes. For me, this ends up looking a lot like addiction. Everytime that nagging feeling arises, BOOM, I end it by opening my phone and checking my social media. Over time, this becomes a reflex. I open the phone without knowing why I’m doing so in the first place. Did I have a purpose in checking it? Or was I escaping from that feeling?
Interestingly enough, meditation has been found to modulate, i.e. reduce activity, in the DMN1. It makes sense. In Vipassana Meditation, one maintains awareness of thoughts and sensations as they arise in the body. Pain in the knee? This too shall pass. Replaying that snarky comment you overheard? That thought too shall pass. Over time, as one practises noticing and letting go of all the pleasant and unpleasant sensations that we inflict on ourselves, a sense of calm arises within.
It’s never fully quiet in our minds, and that’s okay. A sense of equanimity, no matter what we feel, good or bad, is cultivated.
For me, I highly value being in tune with my internal feelings. Awareness of my inner state is precious information. It can direct me towards my true passions, or away from situations that are no longer serving me.
When I turn to numbing - be it reading the comments on news articles, scrolling through instagram, or any other reflexive behaviour involving my phone - it does a diservice to the unpleasant feeling that prompted the search for distraction in the first place. I can confidently say I have never felt better off after being on my phone for an hour or two.
Boredom is there for a reason, and I’m willing to bet that reason is not for me to go on my phone. Lately, I’ve been trying to get curious about my boredom. What is it telling me? Where am I being directed? I’m excited to find out.
Kieran C.R. Fox, Savannah Nijeboer, Matthew L. Dixon, James L. Floman, Melissa Ellamil, Samuel P. Rumak, Peter Sedlmeier, Kalina Christoff,Is meditation associated with altered brain structure? A systematic review and meta-analysis of morphometric neuroimaging in meditation practitioners,Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews,Volume 43,2014,Pages 48-73,ISSN 0149-7634,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2014.03.016.(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763414000724)