Ice and Parlor Walls

Waiting out in the cold can really be an unpleasant ordeal. The cold and the wind really doesn't bother me but the waiting is what got me a week ago and the reason I care so much is that I hardly ever get bored or frustrated with waiting because there is always something interesting to do. However on this cold and blustery Saturday night there was only the traffic going in and out of Burger King, a large yellow arm blocking off the sidewalk from any errant vehicles mistaking it for a road and my mind which could only think about how much I just wanted to leave already. After a few minutes my girlfriend arrived and I we embarked on an adventure down one of the longest and darkest roads in Blacksburg to make cookies. But on the way there my mind didn't leave the bright yellow arm and the cars parked in B.K. and my utterly blank mind was eating away at me.

There's nothing wrong with boredom but I avoid it like the plague. It eats at me in that insidious way that just kills all the life within me and just makes me feel like motion is impossible. Still there is nothing that I can say about it that proves it's a bad thing; even though it's killing me inside I can't condemn it and I certainly can't avoid it. It always comes when I need a break and I need to relax, when I don't have the energy to fight it off. It comes during the holidays when I have escaped from all my work and it makes me want to escape back into hard work and bury myself under a pile of papers. Worst of all boredom strikes the fastest when I'm watching TV or my roommate playing Call of Duty 2. I look at the screen expecting to be entertained but I never am; so I get bored but I can't take my eyes off the explosions and guns on the screen because I'm waiting for something interesting to happen, something that will relieve my boredom. I see the same thing that I feel when I walk around campus past the people with headphones wedged in their ears. What they want from their music is an escape from the boredom of walking from place to place; to forget about all of the other places they would rather be and all the things they would rather be doing. It's like living in a distorted and milder version of Fahrenheit 451 where all anyone wants is another distraction to keep them from feeling boredom.

The trick of boredom is that it always appears when we don't enjoy something or more precisely it comes when we think that we would enjoy something else more than what we are doing right now. So when we are bored we try to do something we enjoy to keep us from thinking about all the things we would rather be doing. I hum and sing to myself; many people listen to music from their Ipod; a kid who was on the bus to the Math Emporium with me on Monday beat boxed the entire way there. This is a great way to avoid boredom but I keep seeing earbuds as seashell radios and Call of Duty on 54" screens as blood dripping down parlor walls* and I wonder if it's right to avoid boredom, if there isn't some other way to deal with it.

After trying over and over I have found that the best way to avoid boredom is to always occupy yourself; with activities and clubs and sports or if you want you can just join the marching band which will consume all of your time. But I am not the Energizer Bunny, I don't just keep going and going and going; I need to sit down and take a break even if I would like to just continue on with life. Also I get sick and bogged down with work, marching band and clubs end after a while and 6 months ago I graduated so I no longer have marching band, Aca Dec or rocket club. Of course I have so much work that I can barely finish it and much of the time I put it off just so I can sleep, but work and I'm assuming anything else gets tedious after awhile and sometimes all I want is a break. Finally there are times like now (Christmas break for those of you who don't own a calendar) where there is nothing to do, no work, nothing pressing to go out to do and a bunch of family members that just want to plop down in front of the TV and want you to be next to them. Right now I am spending some time in Norfolk with my grandparents and I love them dearly but the last time I was here I couldn't bear the stillness and the lack of life in their house, so I started leaving unexpectedly for things like Black Friday shopping and bar hopping with my girlfriend and midnight walks along the water near their house; I really felt like I was suffocating and I didn't know what to do.

Well the solution I have designed, since visiting them last and last Saturdays struggle with boredom while waiting for a ride, is to learn to enjoy the time in which you are relaxing. Enjoy it enough that you don't care about something else more. Trying to avoid boredom is like trying to avoid death, it is frankly impossible. There are simply not enough things in the universe to keep you interested forever and you will eventually feel it eating you away. But if you enjoy the time you are using to relax you cannot be bored. In fact if you learn to enjoy every minute of your life then boredom can't touch you, not because life is so interesting, simply because there is nothing you would rather be doing. The interesting thing is that relieving boredom doesn't require any action it just requires a thought. If your mind is ready to think about every situation so much that it can make you enjoy every moment then you don't have to worry about boredom or tedium or monotony every again because the world is just too wonderful a place for you to ever wish to be anywhere else.

The adventure doesn't end with that though; it actually continued all the way into the next morning. My girlfriend Karen and I were headed out on this long and winding road to visit her roommate from freshmen year who lives out in the country with her fiance. We made cookies with her and her family who was visiting for the weekend and had an absolutely wonderful time and around midnight we decided it was about time to head home. We had heard rain on the roof earlier that night and really only worried about the road being a little flooded but as we were getting ready to leave our hosts warned us that there might be some ice because it was so cold. Obviously neither of us was especially excited about ice on winding country roads in a small car. But we wanted to get home and there was really nowhere for us to sleep since their guest room was filled with family.

We started driving and immediately Karen began to notice how there was ice completely covering the road on a few of the hills. I wasn't really paying attention and didn't know how much were slipping until we came to a fairly sizable hill just at the edge of town. It was long and straight with a large ravine on the right side. As we went up the wheels began to slip noticeably and the car started to slow and fishtail. Karen gunned the engine a few times getting the speedometer all the way up to 70 mph barely able to get us moving faster than 2 mph up the hill.** Unfortunately for us the ravine happened to be on our side of the road and that side of the road was slanted slightly in its direction and because of this unfortunate quality hitting the brakes resulted in an unpleasant sliding motion towards the edge of the road and subsequently a 40 foot drop. We tried to get to the other, safer side of the road a number of times only succeeding in entrenching one front tire in a previously formed rut on our side of the road. I decided to get out and investigate our situation but finding my door unable to open I climbed out back door directly onto the road. I was only a little surprised by the fact that I couldn't stand on the road without supporting myself on the car. I got over to the other side of the car without falling and saw that the only way out of the rut was to back down the hill until it sloped up to meet the road about 40 feet behind us.

About this time Karen decided that she would prefer it if I tried to back the car out of the rut because she was getting stressed. So she directed me down the hill and I tried not to throw myself and her new car off a cliff. I had some difficulty getting out of the rut and ended up with both front tires in the rut at which point I pushed the pedal a little farther and got the car out but perpendicular to the road. To my utter dismay while the front tires were still spinning, the front of the car swung down the hill and the entire car slid to the edge of the road so that when I looked out the window to my left I just saw a few inches of grass and then only trees and black emptiness. For a few minutes after that I tried to drive down the hill in the wrong lane and edge the car over to the right lane. Finally after a few minutes the car fishtailed for the umpteenth time bringing the car closer than ever to the edge of the ravine. This time i could not see grass there was only blackness out my window. Karen and I both got out of the car so that neither of us would go over with it and I got the idea to push it down in neutral while steering from the outside through a window (not the best idea but at least the car wasn't spinning out of control.) It worked for about a minute but then I realized that the car was starting to roll on its own and I didn't have the strength to resist it. I ask Karen to quickly jump in the car and hit the brakes which she amazingly did before the car got away from me. We then slowly let the car down the hill with Karen driving while I walked outside making sure the car wasn't going to roll of the edge.

We eventually got all the way down the hill to the safety of a Baptist church where we called my dad and calmed ourselves down. After a few minutes we made the drive back to her friend's house and banged on their door until they woke up and let us crash on their living room couch. They brought us sheets and pillows and everyone settled in for the night. Before falling asleep Karen and I were talking and she thanked me for not yelling at her when we were stuck on the side of the hill. I was a little taken aback because I hadn't even thought of doing that but she explained that had she been with her father she would expected that out of him. When I thought back to the moment when I was trying to explain to her how to get over to the other side of the road I can distinctly remember being anxious and upset and wanting to shout directions so we could get across as fast as possible. But for a split second I thought twice about how much yelling would help and I realized that it could only make her more stressed. There was no real need for us to hurry over to the other side; I just wanted to hurry because I was afraid.

The most shocking part of my thought process at this point was that I actually felt like I understood the purpose of courtesy and manners. For those of you who don't know, I abhor formality and good manners, I really just think that they get in the way of any mutual understanding people can have because they mask any real feeling we can express. Suddenly though I understood that manners and courtesy aren't wrong or bad at all, we just keep applying them in the wrong place. They aren't meant for the dinner table and fancy receptions, instead they are meant for the most stressful situations to keep you from blowing your top. They keep you from hurting feelings and making the situation worse with outbursts and tantrums. These situations which are the most stressful of all are also the hardest times to remember your manners and to keep calm and collected. The reason manners are only ever remembered at the dinner table is because that's when it is the easiest to think about them; it's so easy that they hardly require any thought at all. So the way to really use them in the right way is to think when you are stressed and you need them the most, think to use them instead of just freaking out and think to understand your situation better so you don't panic and mistake a situation as worse than it really is.

The reason that I decided to present these two ideas in the same post, other than the fact that they were both generated the same night, is that both problems have the same solution; which is thought. Thought can relieve you of boredom by allowing you to let go of the idea that you would rather be somewhere else, doing something else. Thought is an alternative to the mindless diversions and distractions we all use on a regular basis. Thought also prevents us from reacting badly by allowing us to restrain our fear and frustration and it allows us to understand our fears instead of just trying to get away from them. I really believe that to live better that I need to think more and more until nothing is automatic and I have a real reason for everything that I do. Living doesn't have to be continually pondered and agonized over but we shouldn't let habit and routine rule our life. Life without thought, where you just do the same thing day in and day out just sounds monotonous and mundane and more fit for a machine than a person. Life seems like it has more to it than just breathing and eating and to be more than a machine I think life requires spontaneity and variety which only thoughts can conjure up. The most interesting thing about this is that now it seems that life requires effort to make it true living. In my eyes that just makes it more worthwhile.

Well that's all the thoughts I have for now. I am about to fly home and see my friends who I have not seen in over 4 months which is very exciting and it's almost Christmas which is exciting as always. I will catch Santa this year, there is sure to be an interesting story about that.

Merry Christmas! (Insert any other holiday greeting if you so prefer. =D )


*If you haven't read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 you probably will not understand what I'm talking about. Seashell radio's were put into your ear and were almost a constant attachment to everyone's ear canal and parlor walls were replaced with large TV screens and were often filled with bright changing colors that looked like blood dripping down the walls. It's a wonderful book and possibly my favorite book of all.

**By no means should you ever think that this adventure is how you should handle getting up and down an icy hill. Karen and I made a lot of mistakes and were lucky enough to be fast learners. If you ever really want to get up an icy hill buy a very heavy car with all wheel drive and lots of sand and then call me for an explanation or talk to the nearest Canadian.