Busy as Bees | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Busy as Bees | Previous Challenge Entry
By Sylvia Young
01/17/18
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“Mom, I have nothing to do. Can I play on your phone?”

“Uhh, didn't you just get off the computer?” I asked, squinting down at my eight-year-old child.

She crinkled her tiny nose in the way I found adorable. “That was almost half an hour ago.”

“Ah, I see. Well, why don't you go play in your room for a while?” I was thinking about the toys I'd gotten her for Christmas, and all the ones she had before then.

A big sigh. “I did that already. Please, Mommy? I need to check on my cat.”

We don't have any pets, but she was referring to an app I'd let her install, a digital cat.

Now it was my turn to sigh. I need to get dinner done as well as a million other things. “Fine, but just ten minutes, okay?”

This had become the norm over the past I don't know how long. Devices and screens crept into our lives and stole our time. I'm no less guilty than my children. I get a kick out of the games on my phone and play whenever I have a moment that's not overrun with needs.

At my house, my kids are never bored. Whenever the slightest possibility exists that they might become bored, they turn to Netflix, Youtube, the PS3 or some kind of social media (the older ones that is). Our life has become a never-ending cycle of being entertained, and we are stuck.

Every now and again, I think about how bored I used to be when I was a kid. Most of the time when that happened, I'd wander around and find something to. That's actually how I discovered I love books. One day I was just so incredibly bored that I finally picked up Anne of Green Gables, the series I'd been given a year or two before. After that, I was hooked.

These days, we don't give our kids the chance to get bored. I don't know why. Maybe we think it's bad parenting or that they'll get into trouble. If they're not in one activity or another, occupied with homework or with friends, we let them fill up their time with meaningless screen time.

What are we so afraid of, really? That our kids will turn to drugs and sex if they have a bit of free time on their hands? That they'll become criminals or some such?

I know I worry about all those things.

But then one day, I put an end to it...temporarily at least. And then my thirteen-year-old son was so bored that the sat down and tried to play a song he liked on the piano. This is a child who never had a lesson, but can now play about five or six songs quite proficiently, to my ears at least. I'm sure a piano teacher would cringe at the timing and whatnot, but he plays for his own pleasure, and I think he's a little proud of his accomplishment.

Boredom isn't always bad. Sometimes the greatest ideas come out of it, and other times it just allows up to rest. We're busy people with lots of things to do, and in those rare moments when there's nothing, we feel restless. Well, maybe the answer is boredom. Maybe God wants us to be bored and gives us those moments to contemplate things we wouldn't otherwise. Maybe He can speak to us then.

Honestly, I think I could use a little boredom in my life right now.

I think I'll go do nothing at all now and see what happens.

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