Amazingly awesome and blessed boredom
Sometime in the last year, I started keeping a journal every day.
The first thing I do every morning is to make a big cup of coffee in my Bialetti. As soon as I put it on the stovetop, I start writing down things for which I’m thankful. I try to write as many as I can before the coffee boils.
After months of this, I noticed that some things show up again and again.
I noticed because I got bored writing them.
For example: The most frequent blessing to appear in these daily gratitude lists: Time with my three-year old. On most days, it shows up multiple times in the list as I recall things he did or said or experiences we shared.
Another example: Listening to the birds sing and watching the dawn through our big picture window while sipping hot coffee and writing in my journal.
Yet another example: An especially good meal the day before. Time out here: When I was a kid, I was disappointed with supper almost every night. Not because my mom wasn’t a good cook, but because my idea of a “good supper” was pancakes, pizza, or spaghetti. Why serve anything else, Mom? Now, every home-cooked meal is like Thanksgiving dinner. We eat one together as a family at least three nights a week (at the dinner table, no TV). And without any premeditation, every one of these meals shows up in my gratitude journal the next day as if I’d dined at the White House.
Final example: Our home, our street, and our yard. It’s hard not to notice how 1% we live when I look out that big picture window and the morning light is illuminating the great old trees lining our street. It always gets me thinking about how we can walk to a big park in five minutes or to downtown Clawson in 15 minutes. It gets me thinking about how our neighborhood is so quiet and safe. I can’t help but think about how this place is so good for our son to enjoy the wonder of childhood in safety.
Anyway, the more I repeated some version of these things from one day to the next, I started feeling a little bored with them.
“I feel like I write this one every day,” I thought. “Maybe I should just retire it and try to come up with something else for which I’m thankful.”
And that got me thinking: “Why?”
As in, why am I bored giving thanks for these things? Who else is going to read my journal and criticize the fact that every page looks the same as the one before? Doesn’t the repetition of thanksgiving day after day reveal what blessings mean the most to me?
And while I may get bored writing the same thanks every day, would I ever get bored with the things themselves? Is it boring to have a three-year old? Is it boring to wake up every morning and spend the day in such an affluent, interesting, safe place? Is it boring to eat good food and go to bed full every night? I live like a king! I’m the 1%!
The “boring” repetition is a daily reminder of just how blessed and full and rich and wonderful is this plain old ordinary life.
So may God grant that I get to write the same thanks every day for the next 40 years or so. I hope that someday my great grandchildren pick up my journals only to discover that I wrote the same thing every day.
And I hope they get the same message that I’m getting from this amazingly awesome and blessed boredom.