Bored and Alive

A tale of a not-so-exciting evening!

With a dive towards the entry gate of the swimming pool, I press my membership card on the machine.

Beeeeeep!

I can’t enter.

I approach the receptionist sitting next to the gate in a small office.

Protruding lips. Tilted Head. Pleading Eyes.

It’s only 10 seconds past 7pm. Surely, she will let me enter.

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After being terrified of water all my life - in a moment of inexplicable courage - I signed up for swimming lessons five months back.

A day before, on Friday, I was able to finally finish a lap (well, almost). Encouraged by my progress, I decided I would swim on Saturday as well.

Saturday began with anticipation. I read few pages of the book – “The Power of Writing It Down”, along with some passive Netflix watching. I made a light lunch listening to a round-table of actors discussing their work. It was a usual, lazy Saturday.

As the clock struck 5, I started watching some swimming drills on Youtube. I laid down on the bed, and looking in the mirror, imitated the breaststyle kick from the video. Today I was going to practice it.

In all this preparatory work, I didn’t pay attention to the time.

My bus is leaving in 10min!

I hurriedly changed, and collected my swim bag.

Wait a minute, I can’t find my wallet.

I decided to leave. I didn’t need any money since I could enter the pool with my membership card, and public transportation in Luxembourg is free anyways.

It was 6:57pm when I got down from the bus. I started walking leisurely till an image from my passive internet surfing struck me.

The center allows entry only until one hour prior to the closing time.

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“Oh, I’m sorry you can’t enter”, the receptionist said. “It’s automatic. Bad Luck!”

Bad Luck or No Luck?

Why does this always happen with me?

I am texting my husband.

Only to realize that my messages aren’t getting delivered. My internet pack is over and guess what, you need internet to recharge your internet pack.

So here I am in 10 degrees cloudy weather, fully disappointed with a foul mood, a swimsuit underneath the different layers, and with zero money and internet thinking about my next course of action.

I take a deep breath. It’s fine. I start walking towards the bus stop evaluating my options.

Library? Nah, I’m not carrying my library card.

Café? Where is the money?

Call a friend? No Internet, sweetie!

Window-shopping? 7pm in Luxembourg, have I started hallucinating now!

Let’s go back - I decide – Let’s eat some comforting food while watching some more Netflix.

Instead I am distracted by a loud, high-pitched sound. It’s coming from across the compound outside the pool building. There is a small pond with hundreds of birds moving in a circular manner. I have been to this place at least 40 times now, and I don’t recall hearing this sound ever. Is this new or is this the first time I am paying attention to it?

I suddenly feel a new energy rushing through my feet. I’ll not take a bus. Instead I am walking home.

It’s 5kms. It’s a straight(forward) path. Moreover, I can take a bus if I get tired. Though I don’t pay attention to directions usually (and am always accompanied by Google Maps or a Human Map), I’ll get a world record on my name if I get lost in Luxembourg.

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I soon find myself standing on the red bridge which connects the new office district to the older part of the city. I’m not sure how but I find myself thinking about the meditation session at work wherein the facilitator talked about awareness : “as a first step to bring awareness to your present moment, we need to point our attention towards different senses: sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, and finally our thoughts – basically things that we don’t notice when we’re acting from our busy mind.”

I step aside, and close my eyes.

The tram passes by. The bridge vibrates. I notice at least 6 different languages and hear the sound of leaves crumbling beneath passerby’s feet. The crisp autumn air brushes my cheeks. It smells cleaner. It smells fresher.

I open my eyes. I am welcomed by the sight of the valley, dot-sized houses, perfectly lit with the dark blue horizon acting like the base of the canvas. It is magnificent.

I feel alive while doing nothing.

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In her book, “How to do nothing”, Jenny Odell talks about how the importance of ‘nothing-ness’.

In the short term, distractions can keep us from doing the things we want to do. In the longer term, however, they can accumulate and keep us from living the lives we want to live, or, even worse, undermine our capacities for reflection and self-regulation, making it harder, in the words of Harry Frankfurt, to “want what we want to want”… and that…“Our very idea of productivity is premised on the idea of producing something new, whereas we do not tend to see maintenance and care as productive in the same way.”

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I reach home eventually at 8:45pm. I connect to internet, and open google maps. I took 35min more than the shortest route. I also walked 2.6 kms more than ‘required’.

Only to got me contemplating that being bored and disappointed are legitimate feelings, and to feel them rather than mask them is a perfectly acceptable response. The capitalist world pushes you to be hustling all the time, to make a personal brand of yourself, to give your opinion on everything, to exercise all the time and read all the books and travel to all the places and watch all the new shows and attend all social events and network and earn and earn some more and extra, and then document everything, leaving no space for void and self-reflection.

Not realizing that often nothing leads to something.

A change. A surprise. A challenge. A serendipitous encounter. A life-long friend.

New possibilities.

It doesn’t need to be exciting always. Boredom can be pleasant too.

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I started to change my clothes and put my hands in my jeans’ pocket. I was carrying 20 Euros all this while.