Last night I sat in a darkened room with a few strangers watching a documentary called Examined Life. It starts with a quote from Plato, “an unexamined life is not worth living”. The question is, what happens when you examine your life? Listening to the words of the philosophers streaming from the screen in front of me my mind begins to wander back to earlier in the day. I’m reminded how BORED I AM, bored and dulled to such an extent that anything but what I am supposed to be doing is attractive and an easy distraction.
Today I dragged myself kicking and screaming against my will and my better judgement onto campus, into work and to the classroom. I’m unsure but it seems that the students are bored and dulled by the experience too. What keeps me going on this treadmill of an existence is the belief that education can make a difference. At times education can provide spaces for transformation, liberation and hope. Education can be a pathway to other places. What is to become of education? The modern, mainstream, institutionalised version of knowledge acquisition, of empiricism is dulled by its own myopia, is void of radical solutions and is becoming a one dimensional training camp for the masses.
Boredom is the domain of the boring. When there is so much inequality, injustice, poverty, violence, destruction in the world there is no excuse for being bored. What happens when you find yourself in an organisation, system or institution that is part of the damage and harm being done to others? Arguably the larger community or structure is a reflection of each individual. The challenge is therefore to change it one day, one person, one thought, deed and action at a time. Maybe most of my working day is spent doing things that seem to perpetuate what I am trying to change. That does not have to define me or hold me back or trap me inside of the oppression. However, it is important to fight back. It is essential to effect change in order to liberate the oppressor and set us all free to live in a new community built on freedom, diversity, hope and love.
My boredom is a manifestation of my frustration, anger and sadness. To give in to it is the tragedy. To be motivated to find new ways of communicating with people, new ways to learn and most of all new communities in which to redress the injustices that surround us is my path away from BOREDOM to a more enriched, compassionate and gentle life.
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