Joseph Brodsky : In Praise of Boredom
Joseph Brodsky
On grief and reason
(...)
When hit by boredom, go for it. Let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom. In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is, the sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface.
The idea here, to paraphrase another great poet of the English language, is to exact full look at the worst. The reason boredom deserves such scrutiny is that it represents pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor.
In a manner of speaking, boredom is your window on time, on those properties of it one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one's mental equilibrium. In short, it is your window on time's infinity, which is to say, on your insignificance in it. That's what accounts, perhaps, for one's dread of lonely, torpid evenings, for the fascination with which one watches sometimes a fleck of dust aswirl in a sunbeam, and somewhere a clock tick-tacks, the day is hot, and your willpower is at zero. Once this window opens, don't try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open. For boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson in your life - the one you didn't get here, on these green lawns - the lesson of your utter insignificance. It is valuable to you, as well as to those you are to rub shoulders with. "You are finite," time tells you in a voice of boredom, "and whatever you do is, from my point of view, futile."
As music to your ears, this, of course, may not count; yet the sense of futility, of limited significance even of your best, most ardent actions is better than the illusion of their consequences and the attendant self-aggrandizement. For boredom is an invasion of time into your set of values. It puts your existence into its perspective, the net result of which is precision and humility. The former, it must be noted, breeds the latter. The more you learn about your own size, the more humble and the more compassionate you become to your likes, to that dust aswirl in a sunbeam or already immobile atop your table. Ah, how much life went into those flecks ! Not from your point of view but from theirs.
You are to them what time is to you; that's why they look so small. And do you know what the dust says when it's being wiped off the table ?
"Remember me,
whispers the dust."
Nothing could be farther away from the mental agenda of any of you, young and newfangled, than the sentiment expressed in this two-liner of the German poet Peter Huchel, now dead. I've quoted it not because I'd like to instill in you affinity for things small-seeds and plants, grains of sand or mosquitoes-small but numerous . I've quoted these lines because I like them, because I recognize in them myself, and, for that matter, any living organism to be wiped off from the available surface. "'Remember me,' whispers the dust." And one hears in this that if we learn about ourselves from time, perhaps time, in turn, may learn something from us. What would that be ? That inferior in significance, we best it in sensitivity.
This is what it means-to be insignificant. If it takes will-paralyzing boredom to bring this home, then hail the boredom . You are insignificant because you are finite. Yet the more finite a thing is, the more it is charged with life, emotions, joy, fears, compassion. For infinity is not terribly lively, not terribly emotional. Your boredom, at least, tells you that much. Because your boredom is the boredom of infinity. Respect it, then, for its origins - as much perhaps as for your own. Because it is the anticipation of that inanimate infinity that accounts for the intensity of human sentiments, often resulting in a conception of a new life.
This is not to say that you have been conceived out of boredom, or that the finite breeds the finite (though both may ring true). It is to suggest, rather , that passion is the privilege of the
insignificant. So try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations.
Passion, above all, is a remedy against boredom. Another one, of course, is pain - physical more so than psychological, passion's frequent aftermath ; although I wish you neither. Still, when you hurt you know that at least you haven't been deceived (by your body or by your psyche). By the same token, what's good about boredom, about anguish and the sense of the meaninglessness of your own, of everything else's existence, is that it is not a deception.
You also might try detective novels or action movies - something that leaves you where you haven't been verbally/visually/mentally before - something sustained, if only for a couple of hours. Avoid TV, especially flipping the channels : that's redundancy incarnate. Yet should those remedies fail, let it in, "fling your soul upon the growing gloom." Try to embrace, or let yourself be embraced by, boredom and anguish, which anyhow are larger than you. No doubt you'll find that bosom smothering, yet try to endure it as long as you can, and then some more. Above all, don't think you've goofed somewhere along the line, don't try to retrace your steps to correct the error. No, as the poet said, "Believe your pain." This awful bear hug is no mistake. Nothing that disturbs you is. Remember all along that there is no embrace in this world that won't finally unclasp.
If you find all this gloomy, you don't know what gloom is. If you find this irrelevant, I hope time will prove you right. Should you find this inappropriate for such a lofty occasion, I will disagree.
I would agree with you had this occasion been celebrating your staying here; but it marks your departure. By tomorrow you'll be out of here, since your parents paid only for four years, not a day longer. So you must go elsewhere, to make your careers, money, families, to meet your unique fates. And as for that elsewhere, neither among stars and in the tropics nor across the border in Vermont is there much awareness of this ceremony on the Dartmouth Green. One wouldn't even bet that the sound of your band reaches White
River Junction.
You are exiting this place, members of the class of 1989. You are entering the world, which is going to be far morethickly settled than this neck of the woods and where you'll be paid far less attention than you have been used to for the last four years. You are on your own in a big way. Speaking of your significance, you can quickly estimate it by pitting your 1, 100 against the world's 4·9 billion. Prudence, then, is as appropriate on this occasion as is fanfare.
I wish you nothing but happiness. Still, there is going to be plenty of dark and, what's worse, dull hours, caused as much by the world outside as by your own minds. You ought to be fortified against that in some fashion; and that's what I've tried to do here in my feeble way, although that's obviously not enough.
(...)