One ordeal parents endure is when their kids, surrounded by every imaginable toy, game, or video accessory, say, “I’m bored”! In my childhood, my parents would be quick to assign myself and others a task, usually an unpleasant a single, to alleviate my ennui.
If my kids had their way, every day would be savor a trip to an amusement park with a whirlwind of activities to keep them entertained.
I go to fantastic lengths to explain that being bored is area of life and that as adults, they will face boredom quite often. I use activities that exemplify boredom savor “enjoying grass grow” or “enjoying paint dry” and I advocate them to take advantage of those times when there is “nothing to do”. One example I use is Nils Wallerius (1696 – 1724), a Swedish physicist, philosopher, and theologian. His tolerance for boredom was amazing as he is known for being a single of the first scientists to study evaporation using current scientific methods. His task was literally to do the equivalent of enjoying paint dry. His experiments included observing the weight loss of an egg over an entire year and documenting the time for a cup of wine to evaporate. His immense discovery was proving that evaporation occurs in sealed environments. Wallerious may have liked boring activities however his labor on evaporation led to others discovering a/c, the A/C in Heating and Air Conditioning systems. Instead of wine evaporating in an open glass, refrigerants sealed in the Heating and Air Conditioning loop do their magic when they evaporate and draw energy from their surroundings, which is the basis for AC, then now, when my kids complain they are bored, I tell them to go outside, watch the condenser unit and try to make a fantastic observation as Wallerius did while I was in his times of boredom.