Vive le gizmo! Better than watching paint dry

It probably won't be long before you see pictures on Facebook of entire families sitting around absorbed separately in their smartphones with captions like "Nice to see the family getting together for Christmas."

It’s all meant disapprovingly because we have forgotten how boring things used to be. Of course it looks weird and like something out of a dystopian science fiction movie to see everybody in the room or in the train carriage or even, at certain quiet times of day, in the pub gazing into their screens as though in prayer.

But humans have endured centuries of boredom and are understandably eager to escape.

If you look at Honore Daumier’s paintings and drawings of people on buses in 19th-century Paris you will, I think, be struck by the sense of boredom that comes across as people sit there with nothing but their well-worn thoughts to help them pass the time. Some of the men especially look desperate in their boredom.

As you study them, you almost wish that Steve Jobs would hurry up with getting born and selling them iPhones.

Gizmo age

We are now, thankfully, in the age of the gizmo – ranging all the way from phones to Virtual Reality headsets – but humans have always been willing to run from boredom to entertainment when they could get it. Before the smartphone era the people on the bus would have had their iPods stuck in their ears and before that they would have had Sony Walkmans.

Before that again many would have been reading books though many others, perhaps most, would have sat there staring out the window, ruminating, bored out of their heads. An exception was the few who warded off boredom by playing their radios or tapes really loud. That seemed to be a male thing and often these were not the sort of guys you would ask to turn down the radio (thankfully these intimidating chaps have given up listening to the radio and have taken up cycling at speed on footpaths instead: so much more healthy).

If I may make a quick segue from the streets of Paris in the 19th century to a field in Kildare in the 20th, I wonder if any of you have ever spent hours thinning drill after drill of turnips (to make more space for the stronger ones)? Or turning fields of hay with a two-pronged fork? Or footing turf out on the Bog of Allen? Or turning milk in a churn until butter floats to the top?

Romanticised past

I mention these because they form part of the romanticised image of what life used to be like in rural parts in the old days, before we all got caught up in in these new-fangled inventions.

These activities might look romantic in a picture but they were stultifyingly boring. Clocks stopped. The sun stood still in the sky. An invitation to watch paint dry would have come as a blessed relief. Men could get through this by smoking pipes to sedate themselves but for women this would have been unseemly (except for some of the old women in remote areas).

One day I was so bored I brought an alarm clock to the hay field and set it for six in the evening in the hope that my father would see reason and call a halt to the day’s suffering. He completely ignored the alarm and we kept at it for another couple of hours which I got through more quickly because I felt ashamed of myself.

The boredom has been largely taken out of farming by technological advances and thank heavens for that even if it doesn’t look romantic any more.

Of course we have to learn to tolerate boredom, and it happens to be part, at least to some extent, of most human endeavours, like education or ironing.

But we don’t have to elevate it to something noble and I for one am glad to join the great human escape from boredom at this time of year.

Vive le gizmo!

Padraig O'Morain is accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His latest book is Mindfulness for Worriers. His daily mindfulness reminder is free by email.

pomorain@yahoo.com Twitter: @PadraigOMorain