Nothing to Report: Boredom as a Balm

I talk to my mom five or six days a week. My mom has always been a very active person. She has always had a job and lots of friends, hobbies, and activist causes she works on. Her life has been rich and full of things to report when we talk.

My mom is retired now and, like the rest of us, isolated from most of the activities that used to fill her days. When we talk Mom starts the conversation, “Hi Laura, how are you?” At some point in the conversation, Mom will say, “Well, tell me something. I have nothing to report.”

I don’t really have anything to report either but I do have a lot to talk about. This past year has been a year filled with time. I have so much more time at home. Every day is the same. Minus a chunk of hours carved out in the middle of the day for work, the free time of the day is void of the things I used to do — coffee with friends, going to a movie, out to dinner, sitting in the stands of my daughter’s soccer game, going shopping for the boots I’ve been coveting. But now none of that exists. Daily life is boring.

And this boredom is good. This boredom is a balm that I needed to deepen my connection with myself and my partner. We are both bored. And in this boredom, this life devoid of social distractions and obligations our relationship has deepened — with ourselves and with each other.

This boredom has been an invitation into our individual interiorities. Ten months ago the beach we walked was filled with shells and driftwood, seabirds, and other people. But the shoreline has been receding, taking with it everything on the beach. Now the beach we walk is wider, with more sand, no shells, driftwood, birds, or people. It is just us, walking the beach. The ocean is there, vast and beautiful, a constant reminder of the inherent peace that exists when all of the detritus is washed away.

We walk on the smooth sand staring out onto the ocean or looking down and the sand, being with ourselves, quiet enough to hear our thoughts. And every once in a while we come together. We share a conversation about what is going on in each of our interiorities. And it’s interesting. It’s fascinating, this new access to the inner workings of the one I love.

My mentor once taught me the concept, “It’s not the what, it’s the who.” In the context of that lesson, I was trying to come to terms with firing an employee who I felt lacked integrity. My mentor explained, “she may be great at what she does, but it’s the who that matters.”

When I talk to my mom, it’s enough to just hear her voice, to listen to what going on in her head and heart. I don’t need to hear any news. But I get it. This “what” is how we were socialized. What is your job? What is your income? What are your hobbies? What have you done today? The whats are the details that we’ve been trained to give focus and attention to for most of our lives. But now most of the whats are gone and we have this unique invitation to spend more time with the who.

The “who” is the essence, this interiority that often stays hidden. This time of boredom, of nothing to report, has offered an opening to my essence, to my partner’s essence. We don’t have the constant negotiation that we used to have. We don’t have to agree on where to go to dinner or if we want to have so and so to a dinner party. We don’t have to come to an agreement on where we want to travel for the next family vacation or who will stay at home and wait for the plumber. There is nothing to report. There is space, and quiet. We are co-existing in an openness that we’ve never experienced before.

I am worried about going back to the way things were. This new shoreline, this beautiful quietude of our little world, has been a balm and an opening to something richer and more connecting. We talk about it, this new way of being with ourselves and each other. We both feel it and appreciate it. I hope when the beach is full of activity again, when the distractions of life as we knew it return, we can still feel this feeling, that it will always be a part of who we are.

Feeling from the Inside Out

There's a Korean Women's Spa about forty-five minutes away from where I live. Most of my women friends have gone there for massages, scrubs, and just to soak in the pools, cook in the steam room, and lounge in the variety of relaxation rooms. One of my favorite parts of the spa is a little section along the edge of the pools. It's a white-tiled area with benches along two walls, forming an L-shape. Along the walls of the L are spigots with big plastic white bowls underneath. The idea is to fill the large plastic bowl with warm water and wash yourself after a steam or scrub, before entering the tubs. One could also shower, but the bowls of warm water feel so much better.

The feeling of the warm water flowing from the top of the head down the shoulders, over the chest and back, then pooling at the base of the spine offers the sensation of comfort, warmth and bliss. I remember at the last stage of labor with my daughter, going into the warm bathtub. Immersing myself in the warm water offered a similar (yet momentary) ease in my body.

For the last forty days I have been going into the cold lake near my house. I've become addicted to this daily ritual, primarily for the after-effect. The sensation of coming out of the water and the body working to recalibrate towards equilibrium is like nothing else. Yesterday the air outside was 34 degrees Fahrenheit and it was hard to get into the water. After submerging and getting back to the shore, I stood very still and felt my body working to recover from the cold water. It was like the warm water from the spa, but from the inside instead of the outside. Like thousands of tiny trees with plentiful branches and leaves blowing in the wind, my skin was being tickled from the inside out. The heat came from within my body and gave me a similar, yet very distinct feeling of warmth, comfort and bliss that I've experienced with a flooding of warm water on my skin from the outside.

For me, paying attention to physical sensations is one of my tools for staying connected to my interiority. Like a lot of people, I struggle to keep my perspective, to hold onto my feelings or opinions once they enter the outside world. I can feel very clear, very certain of an emotion I am having or a belief I hold, until my thoughts are mixed with someone else's and then it all becomes murky. I suppose that is the very nature of one's interiority-- it belongs only to you. It is sacred and known only to you. Too often I forget to connect back to my inner voice. I get lost in someone else's voice or social media or the news. I have to take a step back, a deep breath and a pause and come back inside myself to remember my interiority. But physical sensations-- like feeling warm water being poured over one's body or the post-cold-water-plunge experience-- are not subject to any external influence. They just are. They are pure. I don't have to try to step back inside myself. I am wholly experiencing the sensations exactly as they are. There is no external influence that can change the feelings in my body.

Recently my sixteen-year-old daughter Lucia started the process of looking for a job. She applied to restaurants and retail stores around town without any prompting. When I asked her what inspired her, she told me that she wanted to make more money so that when she got her license she could afford gas and insurance. I told her I was proud of her for taking that initiative. Lucia then said to me, in a very clear, seemingly planned statement, "Mom, do you notice how I do things when you don't nag me to do them? Remember how you used to try to get me to take walks all the time? Since you stopped bugging me to do that I take a walk every day. It's the same with looking for a job. I did that because I wanted to."

Interiority- Inner life or substance*. The actions Lucia took in her own life came from her interiority, her inner life. And they were pure and free of interference from the outside world (me). She could feel them and respond to them purely, from her inner life. Interiority--inner character or nature* -- is what makes each of us who we are. Connecting with that, listening to it, and acting from that pure internal nature, feels different from doing something (like going for a walk or looking for a job) because someone tells you to do it. 

We live among other people. Being completely free of influence from those around us is impossible. But connecting to one's inner character or nature is where we each find that magical feeling of truth, the feeling that we are doing the right thing, on the right path. It is where we ultimately find happiness. I'm reminded each time I come out of the cold lake that this purity of feeling exists. There is no doubt that I am feeling the sensations blossoming from the inside of my body. I feel happy and sure of myself. I alone feel these thousands of prickles warming my skin from the inside. It is a feeling of aliveness and clarity. Lucia found her interiority the other day. And it made her feel inspired, alive, and motivated. Physical sensations are a reminder of how energizing and connecting it is to really feel what is present. This reminder is an invitation to check back in with ourselves and discover the same sense of presence mentally and emotionally. You don't need to jump into a freezing cold lake to be reminded, but it might help. 

Interiority

I remember when I transferred from Chicago Public Schools to a private prep school in seventh grade. My parents, at their wits end from the constant striking of Chicago Public Schools in the late 1970s, finally abandoned ship. At my new school, during Language Arts one afternoon, the teacher, a stark, tight-mouthed woman with a faux British accent, asked us to write down one word that we didn't know from the book we were reading (I think it was Catcher in the Rye.) The word I chose was "wholly." After class the teacher, having never spent time with kids who'd been educated in a shitty school, pulled me aside and asked, "Laura, do you really not know what 'wholly' means?" She then explained that it was the adverb form of whole. I got it. It made sense. I'd simply never heard that word before.

Right now I'm in the middle of an amazing book, The Yellow House, by Sarah Broom. It's a memoir of Broom's life growing up in New Orleans East in a family of eleven siblings. New Orleans East is a sorely neglected part of New Orleans that has been under-attended or ignored since the 1970s. I have been to New Orleans at least ten times and I only recently heard about New Orleans East from a Lyft driver the last time I was there. I bought Broom's book for my partner Nancy who was born and raised in New Orleans but spent little time in New Orleans East which is, in fact the largest section of the City of New Orleans.

At one point during the book, Broom compares being in her chaotic school in New Orleans East to "an unpredictable, malfunctioning parts factory. You can never tell when a piece will fly off, hitting you in the face, blinding you for life." Shortly after, Broom transfers to a private school outside of her neighborhood where she is, in many ways an outsider, but also connects with a teacher who inspires and nurtures Broom's own love of words. Broom writes, "Writing, I found, was my interiority, and so was God." Later in the chapter Broom describes how speaking in tongues is interiority writ large, "You had to do it without shame, with no self-consciousness whatsoever. The only control was in letting go."

 'Interiority' is a word that I've never heard spoken or seen written, but it was a word I immediately connected with. 'Interiority,' I thought, as I read it in the context of Broom's writing, must be a magical place, a deeply personal and important retreat, a place where one can be wholly oneself. So I looked it up. Interiority: interior life or character; inner life or substance; psychological existence. 

Sometimes there is a point to my blog, and other times I'm just meandering. Today I am inspired by Sarah Broom, by her writing, and by the joy of learning a new word, a wonderful word at the ripe old age of fifty-one. The very concept of interiority gives me so much to think about-- what is my own interiority? What was it when I was a child? How do I help my own daughter find her's? Sarah Broom-- your book is feeding my soul right now and I am very grateful that you've shared your beautiful story.