GETTING BORED IS HEALTHY

We’ve given it a moral weight, as if being unentertained means being unproductive, and being unproductive means being unworthy

- Somi Das

Here's a peculiar panic that sets in when my phone battery hits 3% and I realise I'll have to face the world, unfiltered and unscrollable, for the next 45 minutes.

I can already feel the itch rising, that low-grade anxiety that comes when the thumb has nowhere to go. I'm told it’s called boredom. But maybe it’s something holier. Because what if boredom isn’t the absence of stimulation, but the presence of self?

When I was younger, boredom was a rite of passage. Long summer afternoons stretched like thick molasses. There was no Netflix to anesthetise me, no dopamine buffet of notifications. Just the ceiling fan, rotating like time itself, and me, an unwilling monk in the monastery of stillness.

We used to be good at being bored. We knew how to stare at the rain until it became a story. How to make a game out of shadows. How to think thoughts without immediately turning them into tweets.