This is a very intimate sharing of my story of boredom and safety – two forces that have formed the core of who I am.
I will also share the story of a trauma that deeply shaped my personality. While it may seem that nothing terrible happened on the outside, inside my heart was shattered into pieces. Please read it only if it meets you where you are:
My Core Trauma and Where My Sense of Safety Comes From
When I was about nine, my parents and four siblings went to visit my grandmother, and I decided to stay home to play with my friends. My mother said they would return at 17:00.
At 17:00 they were not home. At 17:15 they were still not home.
17:20. 17:22. 17:23. 17:24. 17:24.30… still no sound of the car below.
My heart was exploding with unbearable pain as I imagined my whole family had died in a car accident. Time passed extremely slowly. I checked the clock every 20 seconds, aching to hear the sound of the car arriving downstairs.
I left a note at the entrance, asking them to wake me when they returned, and I lay in my parents’ bed – something I had never done before – trying to cradle myself to sleep.
It was 18:05. Still no one. I was sure they had died. Not long before, I had read a book about a child in an orphanage and how terribly he was treated. In my mind’s eye, I saw myself taken away by strangers, carried into an orphanage. I remember the physical pain of fear piercing and pulsing in my heart. I didn’t know how to make it stop.
They came home at 18:30. But that pain in my heart never really left me.
After that, I had two long episodes of fear. In one, I was certain my family would run away from me; in the second, I was sure my mother would die in a car accident. Both resulted in me clinging to my mother wherever she went for two full years, just not to feel that piercing pain again.
How This Shaped My Life
Through this, I learned: never rely on one person. People can leave or die. It is unstable. And it hurts too much, my heart can’t take it.
There is a biblical expression in Hebrew that I heard back then and deeply absorbed: “משענת קנה רצוץ” – “leaning on a broken reed.” It means that if you lean on a broken reed for support, it will pierce your hand. I concluded that leaning on one person can pierce my heart and make it bleed.
I learned not to rely on a person, but rather to rely on work. First dance, later teaching NVC. I would always tell my girlfriend: please know that work is my number one; you are second.
This was how I built safety for myself in the world: work as a place where I am appreciated; a community larger than one or two people, so that if some leave, I remain held; and money, so I can access the support I need.
What I did not realize was that bodily capacity is temporary. Safety built on work depends on the body. And if that foundation is gone, the base of my life is gone.
These days I feel depression arising in response to the limitations in my body:
- I have pain in my throat and haven’t spoken for four weeks.
- I have pain in my eyes, fingers, and wrist, so I am limited in how much screen time or typing I can do.
- I have pain in a tendon near my knee, and I need crutches to walk.
What will I do with my life if I cannot speak, type, or walk?
Depression: When the Foundations Fall Apart
The moment when the very foundation of my life crumbles is often the most painful, and possibly the most meaningful moment to uncover my essence and direction.
For some people, it happens when they lose a loved one; for others, it may come with a serious illness or the end of a relationship.
For me, it is happening when my body is at risk of no longer being able to do what it once did.
Boredom:
These bodily limitations prevent me from ‘doing’ and bring panic to my heart: Who am I if I cannot teach or contribute? What will I do with my life if I cannot speak?
And worst of all: How will I pass the time? → The fear of boredom.
Boredom is, by far, the feeling I fear most. I am “addicted” to doing meaningful things, and, I am terrified of meaninglessness.
When boredom appears, I try to escape it by checking emails, cooking, cleaning… or structuring my entire life around doing, doing, doing. Teaching NVC is the most meaningful thing in my life, and, I can admit that it is also an escape from this one feeling.
“All of humanity’s problems stem from human’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Blaise Pascal (1670)
I feel companionship with Blaise Pascal across time. He named my most intimate hell- a challenge I know deeply.
Meeting Boredom, Face to Face
My intention in taking a sabbatical this year was to meet boredom and meaninglessness directly. Still, I managed to escape it by quickly finding other “meaningful” activities, such as making my ‘crap films’.
Yet my voice loss, my inability to walk, and the pain in my eyes and fingers are placing me back on the path I had asked for 🙂. And while there are days filled with hopelessness and grief, I am also grateful. It is as if my body is helping me go the extra mile I would not be able to travel on my own.
Non-practice:
So here is my practice at this moment: not to practice anything. To do meaningless things. And harder still: to do nothing. To be bored. It is the toughest (non)practice I have ever known – The hardest thing for someone like me – It is like a slow undoing of the identity I have built for myself over fifty years.
And I hope and believe- boredom is the space in which something new can begin.
My friend and Connecting2life colleague Nadine told me, “Everything that is not love will fall away”… I like that.
A Confession
Writing this newsletter is, too, an escape from boredom.
And I cherish sharing and connecting with all of you a ton. Because just on the other side of my fear of boredom sits the other foundation of my life: my fear of loneliness.
Wishing myself (and you, if you like) the space, where nothing is required and everything is possible. And togetherness.
Yoram