I Was Always Being Boring

Recently an old and dear friend told me, or wrote me, specifically, and mentioned that she was experiencing boredom and thus, must probably be a boring person, since it is her belief that only boring people get bored.

At first I was inclined to agree with her until I realized that I myself have an extremely low threshold of boredom and rarely experience the state of boredom, usually being content to read something, write something, watch something, play something, talk about something or think about something. In short, I am easily amused. However, I am–as reading this blog quickly reveals–one of the most mindnumbingly boring people on the planet. I don’t have wild sexual escapades, don’t tear other people to little bits and pieces based on their physical looks, tend not to criticize too heavily on much of anything and have an annoying habit of talking about stuff I like in really glowing, positive terms.

It would be safe to say that compared to the people I know, and I’m sure they’d agree if you were to ask them, I am the least interesting and most intensely dull person they know, since I lack drama, conflict, angst or malaise about life and it is precisely those things that make people incredibly fun and exciting to be around, if somewhat emotionally exhausting.

So after giving it some thought, I’ve decided that perhaps the reverse is true, and it might in fact be people that get bored that are exciting since they have to do so much more to pass their boredom threshold and find anything even remotely interesting. For example, I might think that doing the Bull Run in Pamplona, Spain might be so exciting as to cause cardiac arrest, but to those extreme guys that drink Sprite, this is so ho-hum, so run of the mill, that only tying yourself to the space shuttle with a piece of kite string and trying to surf off the exhaust of its thrusters with a polystyrene surfboard would kindle even a mildly raised eyebrow of interest.

Boredom, then, is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. Being an incredibly boring person myself, I tend find most other people incredibly interesting, so in my case, having that low threshold of boredom makes the world an exciting place for me, it just makes me terribly unexciting for anyone else.

How sad. Oh well, back to more video games…