A couple of weeks ago, I babysat three kids for some family friends. I always wanted my babysitters to spend time with me when I was younger, so I figured these kids would feel about the same way. I resolved to not use the TV unless I just really needed a break. They were some pretty active kids, so I figured that they wouldn?t have any problem entertaining themselves the entire time I was there. No problem, right? Wrong.

After about three hours with these crazy kiddos, one of them legitimately sat on the couch for at least half of an hour and spent the entire time moping about his state of boredom or telling me about it. Seeing a problem that needed to be fixed, I suggested multiple activities I thought he might enjoy. That kid shot every single one of my ideas down with a “That’s boring, I don’t want to do that”, and then resumed his complaining about there being nothing to do. The rest of them picked up on it too and I heard the words “bored” and “boring” thrown around a lot until I left.

I was homeschooled for my entire life until the middle of tenth grade, and most of the time, my siblings and I were my entertainment. I could not see how anyone could allow himself to be that bored, especially a second-grader. If I was bored and complained about it, my parents would tell me, “That’s your own fault”, so boredness is not a feeling with which I am familiar. My siblings and I have grown up figuring out ways to entertain ourselves and stay busy. I started thinking about the possible reasons that people are so bored so often in our culture and this is what I came up with.

We live in a culture that is so stimulated by entertainment, media, video games, and all sorts of other fun. We have to be entertained constantly or we do not know what to do with ourselves. If the activities we are a part of are no longer “fun”, we give no second thought to abandoning them completely and looking for something a little more enjoyable. TV, video games, and other electronics have never really been a big thing in our house, so we figure out other things to do.

For a good part of the people in our culture, though, movies and entertainment are a norm and what they would deem pretty necessary for their survival as a kid, teen, or even an adult. The people in our culture desire constant enjoyment and we flip out when no one is there to occupy us with a fun and exciting activity. Because our parents, teachers, and people who took care of us when we were young did everything they could to satisfy that desire, our generation expects the same of our caretakers even as we have grown up.

Have we really grown up? Because entertainment sure seems like an adult version of a babysitter, sparing us from the perils of boredom.

Sometimes I want to see what would happen if we took away the Internet, computers, cell phones, TV, video games and maybe even cars for just one day. Some people would probably go into withdrawals and some might nearly have heart attacks. Granted, cell phones and cars and computers make life a lot easier and make some things possible that we would not otherwise be able to do, like communicate with friends across the world or research information in a nearly unlimited database.

But when we can’t seem to live without all things electric and the fast pace of life that they bring, something is a little out of whack.

My siblings and I would always ask my mom when I was younger, and often we still ask her, “What are we doing today?” Sometimes, to our dismay, she would answer, “Nothing really, we’re just going to stay at home and do schoolwork,” and we would flip out because we were not going to be crazy busy.

PODCAST: Remedy for the bored: Jan. 9, 2013–

Since when did it become more stressful to not do anything than to fill a day with crazy activities and keep a schedule as busy as possible? We want to know why we are so bored all of the time? It’s because we don?t really know how to take a break and relax.

I do the same thing when I go on Christmas break or even take a vacation with my family. I don’t know what to do with myself because all of a sudden, I am not busy. I have a hard time relaxing, and I’m sure that’s mainly because I am so used to being stressed out and busy.

How bad could it be if we had to live like people used to? Take our country back about a hundred years and we might discover what it is to slow down and rest, to not always have to go, go, go. We would not have to worry about whether or not someone texted us back right away or distress about what happens in the latest episode of reality TV. Life really is going to go on, don?t worry.

All of this is not really evil, but if we allow it to, it sure will take over and keep us from living life as we could, where a high score on a video game or being in a perpetual state of excitement aren’t the most important things in life. As a remedy for all of this, we don’t necessarily have to go back to playing with wooden blocks, Tiddlywinks, and Barbies like we did when we were little kids.

But maybe if we quit checking our phones every second of the day and learned that the TV doesn?t have to be on all the time we wouldn’t be quite so bored during the times when we don’t have those things. I think my parents were right in saying boredom is our own fault. We’re the ones who have created the crazy stimulating culture in which we live, and we’re the ones who are unwilling to look for something productive with which to occupy ourselves.

None of the activities that I suggested appealed to that kid when I was babysitting, and I think that was because he had decided that he was going to be bored. Boredom is a choice, and our state of boredness does not depend on the other people around us; we are the only ones who can submit ourselves to being unproductive and thus bored. “I’m bored” is a lazy response to an easily solvable problem.

The next time you fell the need to complain about your boredom to those around you, who really cannot do anything about it, stop bemoaning your troubles and try to find a way out of it. There are plenty of things to do; we just have to quit being too lazy to look around and find them.