Writing Another Story

Oh my gosh.  It’s Relient K, VeggieTales, and Pirates of the Caribbean all in one. It just doesn’t get better than this!

For some reason listening to that song with POTC clips absolutely cracks me up.  I think I’m going to remember this video and watch it every time I feel depressed.

This just made my week! I hope it has the same effect on someone else.

I found this little tidbit while flipping through the June Reader’s Digest yesterday, and it really struck me. I’m sure we’ve all heard this same basic message before ( “I miss Mayberry, sitting on the porch drinking ice cold cherry coke… watching the clouds roll by,” as Rascal Flatts sings). But maybe we haven’t heard it exactly the way Carolyn Johnson says it:

Boredom’s doldrums were unavoidable, yet also a primordial soup for some of life’s most quintessentially human moments… A long drive home after a frustrating day could force ruminations.  A pang of homesickness at the start of a plane ride might put a journey in perspective.

Increasingly, these emtpy moments are being saturated with productivity, communication, and the digital distractions offered by an ever-expanding array of slick mobile devices…

But are we too busy twirling through the songs on our iPods–while checking email, while changing lanes on the highway–to consider whether we are giving up a good thing?  We are most human when we feel dull.  Lolling around in a state of restlessness is one of life’s greatest luxuries–one not available to creatures that spend all their time pursuing mere survival.  To be bored is to stop reacting to the external world, and to explore the internal one.  It is in these times of reflection that people often discover something new, whether it is an epiphany about a relationship or a new theory about the way the universe works.  Granted, many people emerge from boredom feeling that they have accomplished nothing.  But is accomplishment really the point of life?  There is a strong argument that boredom–so often parodied as a glassy-eyed drooling state of nothingness–is an essential human emotion that underlies art, literature, philosophy, science, and even love.

“The Joy of Boredom,” by Carolyn Y. Johnson, The Boston Globe

Whenever people think of living, I think that they subconsciously think of experiences.  We spend our entire lives thinking, “once I get ‘x’ over and done with, then I can really start living.”  ‘X’ may be something different for everybody–finishing school, moving to a new town, getting some great job opportunity, retiring, whatever.  But maybe living is something that happens in the quiet moments that are in between all the bustle of life–in between twirling your iPod, changing lanes, and checking email.  Maybe if we spent more time watching the clouds roll by and less time distracting ourselves with our iPods, we would have fuller lives.

Well, I’ve created a blog, and while I’d prefer to just plunge into the thick of things and start posting, I guess I should start with an official first post of introduction.

So, here it is: the first post. Now that I’ve taken care of that obligation, we can move onto other things! ^_^