The Freedom of Boredom

Prague

It was a beautiful, gray, below-freezing morning in Prague. I woke up around 9 am and peeked out the window. All I could feel was indifference.  Sure, I guess I could go touring, but it was getting kind of old. I felt like I had seen most of what was around. I looked around the room to see what my fellow travelers were up to. Danny, was asleep, snoring so loudly that everyone else was awake. Kayla was reading, Leah was writing. We all exchanged glances that said yes, we all want to hurt Danny. Quietly and not so assuredly, Kayla asked, “Is everyone okay with just having a quiet day in the hostel?” The answer was unanimous. We were staying in. Sometimes the hustle and bustle of travelling is great, and sometimes the boredom is what you treasure the most. We went out to the market to buy some basic ingredients. We truly embodied the spirit of ennui we were feeling when buying food; we stuck to American labels. It was a day of complete surrender to the laziness we felt. We headed down to the lounge in the hostel. It was decked out with twinkly lights, red and black walls, leather couches, a big screen TV, a small kitchen, and an almost complete library of James Bond movies. Who would have thought that in this teeny hostel in the middle of Eastern Europe we would be able to find our fix of Bond movies? We cooked the pasta, filled up our plates and buckled down to complete an almost daunting task. We were going to watch as many Bond movies as was humanly possible in one sitting. Some might criticize our choice of activity and understandably so, we were in a beautiful foreign country and yet all we wanted to do was pig out and watch movies. And yet, there was freedom in that knowledge. The boredom was a “symbol of [our] liberty” ("Why not stay at home?", Aldous Huxley). We welcomed the ennui and the boredom became enjoyable. That Saturday became one of my favorite memories of my trip. The ability to take pleasure in the boredom, in the mundane, the typical, is what made us real travelers. We found freedom in the boredom, and relished every minute of it.