boredom is kinda out there, man

As college comes to a quiet close, my unstructured free time is expanding rapidly. I'm caught in between the passing university life and my future Peace Corps experience. A limbo-like state. As such, I've been feeling bored, but content. These relaxing days pass by both slowly and rapidly; When you're inside and actively living an unstructured day, it feels like forever. But string a couple of those in a row, and in hindsight, the time feels like lightning.

The void of the "many back-to-back days without notable events" is quite fascinating: We know they must have occurred, but we cannot recall a single distinct memory from them. Think of how many days of you're life must now be lost and forgotten, because they were either unmemorable or not recalled often enough to be retained. I find myself wondering what percentage of our past lives have become this way. Looking back on the summers in between middle school and high school years, I cannot recall a distinct memory, but I know they were lovely anyways.

Boredom is like the present-equivalent, in many ways, to this memory-based phenomena. In my recent bouts of boredom, I've noticed my immediate reaction is to flee from it into some form of action or experience (going on my phone, consuming media, physical movement). However, sometimes boredom is strong enough that those (usually bulletproof) methods feel unattractive. We're instead forced to sit with the boredom, and feel it's presence. Experience that subtle melancholy that accompanies boredom; perhaps slightly negative in connotation, but seen as neutral when closely examined.

After sitting with boredom long enough (perhaps 10-20 minutes) it mystically fades. In the end, boredom is a emotion; and like all emotions, they come and go. But boredom stands separate, in my eyes, as more existential than the typical happiness/anger/sadness cocktails. What it's getting at is the wiring we humans have for action and doing, and fearing inaction and non-doing.

Perhaps that's why, so often, people seek vacations where they can do nothing for a few days; as a reprieve from the constant incentive to go-go-go in the bustle of modern living. Of course, some vacations end up being more busy than our typical day, when they are crammed with sightseeing and tourist destinations. We seem to seek one or the other, depending on circumstances.

Tourist vacations are amazing and adventurous, but I often look back more fondly on the boring vacations: just sitting on a beach, listening to the waves and watching the clouds roll overhead. Despite the pull I feel towards boring vacations, they evoke no strong memories. Their beauty lies beyond the memorable, in an infinite, eternal void; which is perhaps only so spell-bounding because it defies our instinct that all "good" moments should be memorable.