by Chloe Dent
The other day, I was lying in bed and thought, “I’m sooo bored.” Like anyone else, I immediately reached for my phone, but then it hit me: I haven’t been bored in years. Not the real bored. The kind where you stare at the ceiling until you start naming the bumps in the paint or sit by the window counting how many cars drive past your house. The kind of bored where you make up stories about clouds, draw pictures with no purpose, or try to invent a new game just to pass the time. And it raises the question: when did we decide boredom was a problem to be fixed?
Nowadays, when we’re bored, our first instinct is to pull out our phones: Instagram in grocery lines, podcasts during walks, and TikTok before bed. These days, boredom is almost impossible because every quiet moment is filled with a screen. You feel the soft, cold glow of your phone against your face. Your thumb scrolls automatically, almost hypnotically, past memes, news, and endless videos, never stopping. You hear the faint hum of notifications in the background, punctuated by the half-listened conversations happening around you: someone talking in the other room, a sibling playing a game, a friend laughing on a call – but none of it quite registers. Even when you look up, it’s as if your mind is still half-buried in the tiny rectangle in your hand. The world outside your screen feels like background noise, and quiet moments have been replaced with a constant, low-level buzz.
This past weekend, my sorority had our fall semester prayer retreat, and around 10 o’clock, my phone died. I had already planned to go home because I wasn’t feeling well, but the drive home was done in complete silence. The roads were nearly empty, dark except for the occasional streetlight, and the only other cars were far ahead or behind. At first, I felt restless, reaching for that familiar device that wouldn’t turn on, wanting to play music as a drove and check texts at red lights. But as I drove, I noticed the quiet in a way I hadn’t in years: the hum of the tires on asphalt, the rhythm of my own breathing. Without the constant buzz of notifications, my thoughts began to wander freely, and for the first time in a long while, I was just… present.
When I was a kid, boredom wasn’t something to fix with a screen – it was a playground for the imagination. I’d play with my dolls, making up stories for their lives. I’d doodle in notebooks with no purpose or make up games with my cousins. Boredom gave me time to think, to create, and to simply be. Now, I realize it isn’t wasted time at all. It’s the space where ideas sneak in and connections happen, where the mind gets quiet enough to notice things that usually go unnoticed. Maybe boredom isn’t the absence of stimulation; it’s the presence of possibility.
So, next time you’re waiting in line, try not to reach for your phone. See what happens when you let your mind wander for once. Maybe you’ll notice the little details around you – the pattern of the floor tiles, the conversations of locals, or the way sunlight hits a window. Maybe you’ll start thinking of an idea you’ve been ignoring or remember something from your past that makes you laugh. Maybe you’ll strike up a conversation with the person next to you, and actually connect, face-to-face rather than through a screen. Boredom opens the door to small moments you’d normally miss, and in that quiet space, the world suddenly feels a little bigger, a little richer, and a little more your own. Boredom might just be the quiets out brains have been begging for.
