Becoming a new mum has been a steep learning curve. I thought I was going to be the teacher, and my baby the student. As it turns out, it is the other way round, and I am learning eveiy day. I often catch myself watching him play. Not infrequently, the most mundane of objects will captivate his attention for hours at a time. The world around him absorbs and fascinates him, and I feel envious of his endless curiosity. Observing him has made me think about how little I assimilate my own environment. I never stop and do nothing -nothing at all. And this got me thinking about boredom. Turns out, boredom is really interesting! Boredom seems to have earned itself a bad name. The dictionaiy defines it as a state of being weaiy and restless through lack of interest. Tedium, apathy, irksomeness ... meh. In fact, the word 'boredom' only entered English parlance relatively recently. Ironically, it was in a Dicken's novel called 'Bleak House' - Lady Deadlock of the leisure class declared that she was 'bored to death' of her marriage. However, the fact that the word boredom only arrived in the dictionaiy during the Industrial Revolution perhaps speaks volumes. Prior to industrialisation perhaps we were all too busy labouring in the fields to feel bored? Has modern day culture created boredom?
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