The Unstructured Summer

“I’m the child of your rainy Sundays.

I watched time crawl
Over the ceiling
Like a wounded fly.
. . .
I know Heaven’s like that.
In eternity’s classrooms,
The angels sit like bored children
With their heads bowed.”

These lines from a poem called "To Boredom," penned by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic, perfectly capture my current fascination with boredom, especially in the context of my teenage son’s ongoing summer vacation this year.

My son will start high school this Fall. I love the concept of ‘gap year’—the year-long break some students take typically between high school and college (as Malia Obama famously did). While we don’t quite have a whole year between middle school and high school, we decided to make this summer a ‘gap summer’ —an agenda-free, unstructured one, fully knowing that it might make my son feel bored.

But I believe in the power of boredom to lead to creativity. In my summer 2013 blog ‘Ode to boredom,' I wrote: “Creativity must have these pregnant phases of nothingness to retool its cradle, i.e., your brain.” This observation was based on just my own instinct at that time. But since then I have found both anecdotal and research-based support to back-up my position.

For example, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creative genius behind the celebrated Broadway musical ‘Hamilton,’ emphasized that it’s good to be bored. He wrote: “Time alone is the gift of self-entertainment—and that is the font of creativity. Because there is nothing better to spur creativity than a blank page or an empty bedroom. I have fond memories of pretending ninjas were going to come into every room of the house and thinking to myself, What is the best move to defend myself? How will I ‘Home Alone’ these ninjas? I was learning to create incredible flights of fancy.”

Some psychologists actually recommend that children be bored in the summer. Dr. Teresa Belton, an education expert said in a BBC interview that boredom could be an "uncomfortable feeling," because society has developed an expectation of being constantly occupied and constantly stimulated externally, but boredom is crucial for developing “internal stimulus,” which then allows true creativity. 

And unstructured idleness is healthy not only for the children. Author Brian O’Connor wrote an article in the TIME magazine in the summer of 2018, reminding adults why doing nothing is one of the most important things they can do.

So far freestyling the summer vacation is working well for all of us. Our son is spending significantly more time in the kitchen, whipping up delicious avocado toasts and made-from-scratch pizzas when he is bored. He is playing way too much video games with his friends for sure, but he is also going for a run with our dog in the middle of the day, practicing his conversational Bengali with grandpa while gardening with him, or biking to the local library, picking up not only a new book, but also a cup of bubble tea on his way back.

Suddenly, not planning the summer feels like the smartest thing that we planned for our son this year.

Ode to Boredom

July 1, 2013

Kalyani, India

I suppose at least a few of the following factors, in no particular order, need to converge for a blog about boredom to materialize: randomness of remnant jetlag, turning forty (and being in a protracted state of introspection), a solo trip to one’s childhood hometown for the sole purpose of spending time with a recently-widowed parent, a cable scorched-out-of-action by a formidable lightning (it is the season of Monsoon in India) ensuring there is no Internet connection at home, and, a palpable unfamiliarity with what to do with a very large chunk of time suddenly becoming available to you when your domestic and professional responsibilities are halfway across the world.

When I am in California, the days pass by before I can even blink. I crave for solitude and freedom from the to-do list. I feel the pangs of guilt when I talk to dad over telephone and he sounds feeble and I long to teleport myself instantly to India to see how he is doing. Now that I am in India, dad is at the best of his health to the point that he does not even want to go for a routine checkup, stubbornly citing the reason that the doctor might take him as a hypochondriac —“Dad is on an emotional steroid”, according to my brother. I guess everything that they say about the positive health effects of having your near and dear ones close to you is true, but the result is that I am jobless after finishing a 500-page book in 4 days. If you must know, the just-finished book is Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James. And now I have moved on to revisiting the Bengali classics by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhya. The breadth of the spectrum that is needed to cover both these genres is not insignificant, and you need a spectacular sense of complete boredom to undertake this kind of a lazy project and enjoy everything about its ‘no-deliverables, no-constraints’ aspect. I think part of me is becoming a fan of boredom. If not anything, it is the undeniable proof that if you are bored, and you are not only acutely aware of it, but you are actually starting to relish it, then you are finally free of all the stimuli that you must process constantly when you are in the momentum of your usual daily routine.

Creativity must have these pregnant phases of nothingness to retool its cradle, i.e., your brain.

I am solving the daily Scrabble in the Leisure section of a print newspaper---slightly damp from the humidity hanging heavy in the air--- sprawling on my mom’s daybed, admiring her black and white framed picture that we put on her dressing table, now that she herself is gone. A basket full of fresh white flowers plucked from our garden is making the air fragrant. It is 12:30 PM. I already had two rounds of sumptuous home-made snacks and yet to have a late lunch with dad, to be followed by a siesta and then maybe an evening walk. No agenda to achieve anything today, or tomorrow, or the day after. It is boring no doubt, but how deliciously so!