Bored

Do you know that I have never once, in all this time in Mongolia, been bored? It shocked me when I thought about it, but it's true. In America I thought or said out loud that I was bored quite often. Even around my best friends I would be bored, which now just seems ridiculous. How could I have been bored when I was around my favorite people in the entire world?

I think it has a lot to do with our distractions, our saturation with stimulus in America. We have a never-ending amount of things to fill our senses and we hope that they will make us happier. Video games fill our screens, food fills our stomachs, and maybe most of all random people fill our ears with nonsense: celebrities, pundits, experts, professionals, whoever. Even though our lives are incredible, many media sources would have us believe that our lives are unremarkable. When characters on the screen have such interesting lives how can we compare? We don't compare. We shouldn't. The comparison is unreasonable. Reality is far different, much deeper, and more full than all of that. A simple life of love, friends, family, and adventures is enough to fill many wonderful years, months, weeks, days, hours and minutes. It might just be that the moment we realize that is the moment we stop being bored.

One can dream of something more terrible than a hell where one suffers;
it's a hell where one would get bored. Victor Hugo