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Dalton
Roberts |
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Of all the mysteries that confound me in my moments of quiet reflection, one of the biggest is how anyone can be bored. I have never been bored. Even when I was forced to go to adult church as a young child, I would find ways to entertain myself. I would count the number of bald heads and the number of people who were dozing. Those who were fast asleep counted double and those who were snoring counted triple. I would count the number of times the preacher said, “uh” or “duh.” This came in handy later when I joined Toastmasters and they charged me a quarter for every “uh” or “duh in my speeches. The earliest intimations of a budding songwriter in me came in the mornings I went through the hymnal to see who wrote my favorite songs. The preacher could drone the whole congregation to sleep explaining the Trinity but I was totally engrossed in counting the number of Fannie Crosby songs in the hymnal. My point is that your mind and where it is directed is your own business and you owe it to yourself to direct it toward your own interests. If you establish that habit early in life, you may never be bored. When someone hammers me to listen to them and they are not talking about anything of interest to me, I picture him or her as a human Foghorn Leghorn telling a young rooster, “Pay attention to me, boy, when I am talking to you.” You do not owe it to anyone to let him or her bore you. It will kill your curiosity and when your curiosity is dead, real learning is over. I love Shakespeare but I took a D minus in college to keep a professor from turning me against Shakespeare’s plays. She had a horribly irritating voice and was the world’s worst actress. She did all the parts in class and everyone hated to listen to her. The day before the final test, she asked me to stay after class and told me there was a danger I would fail because I had not paid attention in class. I told her she bored me and I did not allow anyone to do that to me. I did well enough on the final test to get a D minus. I am as proud of that grade as any “A” I ever received. Henry Miller gives us the secret to never being bored in this quote: “The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” I would add, “Even if it is nothing more than bald heads in church.” I experienced this feeling a couple of years ago when I got booked to perform for the Alabama Quilters meeting at Scottsboro. All around the banquet hall there were large quilts on display. I have never seen paintings more beautiful than those quilts. Each one was “a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” As I feasted my eyes on them I realized that someone had spent hours in ecstatic, focused attention sewing and stitching each one together. For the first time in my life I realize quilting is an art form and I was in the room with true masters. I have only had two addictions in my life. My addiction to nicotine was a nightmare. I never did quite get addicted to alcohol because it dulled my mind and interfered with my other addiction, which is ideas. I am incurably addicted to ideas and it has kept me from ever being bored. So the next time you start feeling bored, look for an idea with the power to transport you to “a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world.” The day you make your mind your own personal playground, you will never be bored again.
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