By Wilson Love
Aauuugh! Poor thing.
Time for a group hug, or better yet an old fashioned, all out pity party.
No, wait – I’ve got it: therapy. Yes, therapy is the answer to your lack of enthusiasm for, well, everything. Sitting in a comfy office while whining to a professional listener about your motivational deficiencies has got to be the cure.
Add some prescription (anti-whatever) drugs to the mix and there you have it; all the world’s wisdom for getting out of gloomy boredom. Now, that wasn’t so bad was it? The answer to your problem in thirty seconds of reading. But what if it had taken the entire article to deliver the coup de grace? Would you have become bored somewhere in the middle and stopped reading?
Okay, enough you say. You don’t personally have a problem with boredom,…but your friend Billy Bob sure does. Wow, that guy is so bored he barely gets through his work day and then goes home and falls asleep in front of the flat screen until it is time to do it all over again.
No energy. No interests. No ambition. He’s so lethargic and lazy he won’t even go fishing with you. What’s up with that? I’m glad you asked.
Billy Bob suffers from self-focus, otherwise known as pride. Let’s pause right here in order to grasp a simple truth. Pride can encompass either a sense of superiority OR inferiority. Billy Bob’s first, middle, and last thoughts are trained on himself, whether good or bad, uplifting or discouraging. Is this getting too deep for you? You do want to help your friend, don’t you?
Self-focus always leads to dissatisfaction. Why? Because we’re not put here on this earth for self-gratification. There is a bigger picture than living life just to meet our individual needs and wants. In truth, the picture is so big that God Himself created it. Jesus put it this way, “If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it”. (Luke 17: 33 NLT)
So the thing we want to receive, we must first give away. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? Well, crazy sounding or not, the results are undeniable.
Share this with Billy Bob and suggest he do something (anything) for someone else. Encourage him to make a habit of this whole “do unto others” thing. If he takes you up on it, you’ll both see the death of boredom and the birth of excited living.
Wilson Love is Owner/Operator of The Practical Outdoorsman, a retail and consignment store.