Inspired To Do Nothing By Colin Braisset

I selected the article about Colin Bisset, who is “inspired to do nothing”. I chose this article because it seems interesting, I mean how can someone be inspired to do nothing? Oxford Dictionary defines the word inspired: “of extraordinary quality, as if arising from some external creative impulse”. It doesn’t seem to me that wanting to do nothing is creative. The author was walking through the “lush gardens of a grand country home” with a friend and says to his friend that he would love to live somewhere like this country home, and be “wonderfully bored”. He mentions having grand parties, cocktails, and spending summer days on the lawn. His friend responds in saying “how could you be bored if you had all of that?” He responds to tell his friend
that he has always dreamed of being bored on a huge and stylish scale. He suggests that people with all of those things have to be utterly bored ultimately because it isn’t enough and that boredom will win through. The author tells us that when we become an adult, we have the choice between luxuriating in our boredom or getting up and doing something about it. The author was coming from the position of a differing position on boredom as a child as opposed to now. He tells about going to Scotland to visit his grandparents year after year and that he eventually got tired of the usual things he did there. For the first few years he really enjoyed exploring the rocky seashore and then the newness began to fade and he fell bored. He tells that his parents enjoyed sitting on the porch conducting “endlessly dull conversations”. He says that because of his boredom he spent a lot of time thinking. He tells about looking out at the ocean and scenery and pondering whether it was real or if his eyes were deceiving him and everything was an illusion. He says that the philosophical angst he experienced was to be attributed to the amount of time he had on his hands.
Colin then points out that Sir Isaac Newton was sitting under an apple tree, and Archimedes was in the bath, when clarity struck.
He uses these examples to show that doing nothing can be the key to getting somewhere. Colin then reveals that he lives in a “surfing suburb”, and tells that he sees groups of people with differing ages gathering to observe the surf. He suggests that these people have zoned out and are using watching the surf as an excuse to stare off into space. He tells us that workplace boredom – watching the clock anticipating the time you are going to be off – is not the type of boredom that he is speaking of. He ends with saying that the type of boredom you have when you decide to catch up on television shows before tackling the future, is the reason that God created bed sores and cramps. I am not sure if I agree or disagree with this author. I would like to be wonderfully rich and not worry about making bills, but then again I would get bored if I did nothing all day. That’s the type of bored he warns us against saying that we have to move. He does make a good point that highly intelligent physicists and philosophers achieved great things through the act of doing nothing but sitting staring into space and thinking. I enjoyed reading this article and it made me rethink boredom! I also think that his suggestion of why God created bed sores and cramps is very clever and
funny.