Wandering Mindspace

On my way home from work this evening, I was pondering what it is that makes up a person’s day. I thought about my own experience because that is what I am most accustomed to, but I would like to know how other people view their days. On an average week, I put in at least five, solid, sixteen to eighteen hour days without trying. At least two days a week, it’s more like twenty—and they’re not the days you think.
It’s raining gently outside, and on this evening, I’m letting the light clackety click click clack click clack of the keyboard play a harmony to the universal melody outside my window. That is what I think about in your average moments.
I was asked the other day, by a very good friend of mine, two of the most difficult questions I have been asked in a very long time—and their ontological nature probably has something to do with it;

“What do you do when you get lonely?”

and

“What do you do when you get bored?”

Starting with the second question first, it is entirely possible to take the Slavoj Zizek approach to the question and Hegelize things a bit by saying: I never get bored. But, then again, I’m always bored. Consistently bored. What have we accomplished? Perhaps nothing, but perhaps I really don’t ever feel bored. My sixteen, eighteen, and twenty-plus hour-long days come with zero effort on my part. I wake up, I have many, many things to accomplish (usually some combination of reading, writing, playing the guitar, sorting out business with whatever needs sorting out) in the morning, I spend ten hours involved in work-related, school-type things, I come home and spend three hours doing more of what I did in the morning (except this is also usually when I study Korean), I have a bit of dinner, and that’s a solid day. On Wednesdays I go into town and play the guitar. On Saturdays I let the wind take me where it will. Both of these days are usually very, very long. Sunday is devoted almost entirely to reading, writing, playing the guitar, and doing something physical (hiking, walking around, running, the driving range, whatever). I quite honestly have very little free time.
So, with all these things taking up my waking hours—to the point that I barely have a chance to take a breath and have to schedule in relaxation time—how is it that I am unfailingly, bewilderingly bored? The answer to that question is that I am perpetually avoiding boredom. Somewhere along the line in my life, and who’s to say exactly when it was, I decided that boredom was a curse. We choose to be bored. How can you be bored inside an existence that has so much to offer? I have considered the possibility that perhaps it is the creation of things that keeps me occupied. In any given week, I write forty-sixty pages of words. That’s not an incredible amount by any stretch of the imagination, but I spread that out over the course of the week, chipping away at it, an hour here, an hour there, and, suddenly, I have managed to spend between twenty and thirty hours of my week in the act of writing. Practice is one of the biggest focuses of my life, and my body is currently practicing writing every day—only barely caring about what happens over the course of that writing helps (I once had a writing professor tell me that quality comes from quantity, by which he meant that without the appropriate amount of material to work with, there is no way you’ll be able to craft the highest quality product—we’ll get it in editing!). I read at least a hundred pages from a variety of books during the week (I’m currently working on Style in History, Confessions (Augustine), and May All Beings Be Happy), and I read fairly slowly, marking, and notating (DAMN YOU EDUCATION HISTORY) which tends to take time. I could play the guitar for hours on any given day of the week, if I were allowed. I am very actively running away form boredom. I exist boredom in the sense that I AM not bored. Or something like that.
As far as the second question goes, it is important to know that the question was posed to me by a known womanizer after he had just been broken up with—as with the other question, but that had happened earlier in the day and was unrelated to his philandering. We were in Busan. He was lying on the bed and I had a traditional mat on the floor. “What do you do when you get lonely?” To be honest it caught me off guard, but I think the answer to it is roughly the same as the other one: I never get lonely, unless of course I'm horribly lonely.
Our lives are like a giant block of marble that we are given when we are born. For the first few years, other people hack away at it and give us a basic shape. Then, after a while, they tell us to help them out, and we gladly hack away at this gigantic block of marble. After a while, something strange happens that I can’t really understand right now. We are left holding the chisel and the hammer. Other people can come along and, if we let them, they can start hacking away at our block of marble, and we can wander over to theirs and do the same. The problem is that if you want to create your block all by yourself, you have to keep people away. Most people want to hack at your block of marble. They want to put their imprint on your life—perhaps it is the sub-conscious need for re-direction from the affairs of their own life. We wind up in a sticky situation because everybody wants to make their own life’s work, and everybody wants to hack at other people’s lives. Sometimes this is beneficial because sometimes people need help with their vision. Sometimes it is detrimental and downright annoying.
Existential theory says that we are forever alone because our consciousness cannot be combined with another consciousness. Christians say that God is that fulfillment. As a matter of fact, most mainstream religions make the claim that what they are offering is the fulfillment of the void. But, does spiritual/consciousness loneliness fulfillment mean the same as physical loneliness fulfillment. I think only a fool would say yes, if only because they aren’t the same species. The same genus… perhaps, because they can have the same effect, but the tactile sensation of being held FEELS different.
I guess what I’m getting at here is that mankind seems to be perpetually stuck in the abyss—or at least hopping back and forth over it—between the physical and the spiritual. In the physical world, we do our work for the day. In the spiritual world, we do the work of our life. Every day, when we are simply doing whatever it is we’re doing, we are accomplishing this two-fold fact of existence. Investigation of the spirit that is alive and well in the world requires physical effort, and when there is spirit to investigate, who could be bored? Who could be lonely?
The funny thing is, I just had the thought… at least that’s what I think RIGHT NOW. It could all change tomorrow. I, in my perpetual, professional ignorance don’t know.