Simple living: wrestle boredom to the ground

Many people are superficially attracted to the idea of simple living because they sense that their lives are cluttered. They hope that a dose of simplicity will help to reduce the clutter, freeing up more time for … well, something. But if the clutter is there for a reason, and they fail to deal with the reason, then most likely when space is created new clutter (or worse) will swoop in to fill it.

Boredom is the great enemy of simple living. In his Pensees, Blaise Pascal wrote: “The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.” We dread stretches of time where we are left to our own devices, and seek to fill them with distractions. Television, radio, and movies are obvious time-kilers; but we don’t do much better when we choose to spend our time with friends discussing our favorite TV shows or movies. And though it may seem more elevated to spend our time chewing the theological or cultural or political fat in person or on the internet, if time spent on things does not translate into concrete changes in the way we or others do things, then it is also just another distraction.

I’ll trust that you are aware enough of the common ways of killing time—television, movies, videos, video games, newspapers, news magazines. Here are some less obvious ways that we distract ourselves from boredom:

• Errands. Small impromptu errands are a great way to kill large amounts of time. The time spent at the post office or the grocery store or the dry cleaners may be short, but the time driving there and back will almost always be much, much longer. If we are clever, we will fail to plan ahead so that we constantly find our selves in need of running small impromptu errands.
• Chauffering. Here we manage to kill not only the time spent driving to and from, but also the time spent waiting for the piano or ballet or art lesson to get done. If we are lucky, we will be close enough to a Starbucks or a bookstore or a shopping center to kill the time and spend some money, too.
• Gathering. Regular gatherings like choir practice, committee meetings, men’s and women’s Bible studies, or Wednesday night prayer meetings are great for killing time. You’ll probably need to change clothes before you’ll go. It’ll take time to get there. You’ll want to arrive early to spend time with your friends. You’ll get started late. You’ll hang around afterwards visiting some more. It’ll take time to get home. And then you’ll probably have to deal with the disruptions that arose from leaving the spouse and children at home on their own.
• Phone calls. Sometimes it’s not enough to be bored by ourselves, we need to share our boredom with others, and so we call them up to check on them, to see if they have any prayer needs, to share some prayer needs of our own, and to catch up on the news of the community. You kill not only your own time, you do your friend the favor of killing some of theirs.
• Socializing. It takes time to be in the presence of your friends. No better way to kill it than to spend it rehashing the same old religious and cultural and political problems you solved the last time you got together.

As usual, each one of these things is less a bad thing than it is an abuse of a good thing. Just because doing something is not in itself sinful doesn’t mean we can’t be doing it for sinful reasons. Living an active and involved life is not sinful, as long as our activity and involvement don’t detract from our God-given responsibilities to Him, to community, and to family.

It’s easier to sweep the distractions from your life than it is to want to do it, and these days not wanting to do something is justification enough. What help is it to point out to someone that distractions tend to crowd out the good things, if that person puts pleasure above duty? Eliminating distractions is guaranteed to bring you less pleasure, not more–until you learn to stop taking pleasure in distractions and start seeking pleasure in the things you replace them with.

Our children eat and enjoy an astonishing variety of food because of a dinner-table ritual saying they’ve heard from birth: “You don’t have to like it, you just have to eat it.” Once they learned that what currently pleased them wasn’t the determining factor, they found it surprisingly easy to learn to like what they had to eat—or at least most of it.

But even if you want to do it, it’s easier to sweep the distractions from your life than it is to keep others from taking their place. Jesus said:

When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, “I will return to the house I left.” When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.

You not only have to determine that you will take pleasure from the things that are your duty, you actually have to do it. It is not enough to eliminate a distraction; you have to understand what God-given itch that distraction was scratching, and then figure out how to scratch it in a godly manner. If you are running errands or chauffering because you don’t like spending time at home, it isn’t just a matter of getting the errands or chauffering under control—you have to learn to enjoy staying home. If you like meetings or the telephone or socializing because they give you an opportunity to converse, learn instead to enjoy scratching that itch by conversing with your spouse or children.

Finally, as your efforts to simplify begin to open up space in your life, learn to enjoy that space. As long as your God-given responsibilities are covered, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying that time as you see fit. You could even attend a gathering—or you could spend the time at home enjoying your family’s company. You could call a friend, or answer their call—or you could turn off the ringer and let the answering machine collect messages for you to return later.

Best of all, by avoiding unnecessary entanglements you keep yourself available for friends and family when a real need arises. You might even spend the time preparing by collecting wisdom and resources that can meet those needs.