I began thinking about the phenomenon we
call boredom while watching public-television reruns of a
provocative series called Frontier House. Its
creators took three American families and placed them in the
Montana wilderness for five months, from late spring to early fall.
Then the families pretended it was 1883.
They built log
cabins and corrals, cut and chopped wood, gathered wild hay, milked
cows, raised chickens for eggs and meat, a pig for slaughter. They
grew gardens and constructed root cellars.
As the months
progressed, they discussed their problems and insights on camera,
while watchers like me sat in comfortable living rooms. Initially,
the teenage girls were upset about leaving makeup, shampoo and
other amenities behind. They were “grossed out” by the outhouse, by
the urgent daily routine of milking a cow even during a snowstorm.
The young boys missed their computerized PlayStations, but soon,
every child became involved in the biggest game of all: Survival.
Because there were no packaged foods or microwave ovens,
the women’s cooking skills became important and appreciated.
Children had real work to do; they saw themselves as more than
waiting to be set free in the “real world.”
“I found my
imagination,” said one boy to the camera. The camera followed him
when he wasn’t doing chores, when he roamed the woods with
sticks in hand, absorbed in his own world.
I don’t
want to romanticize frontier life, or any period of genuine
hardship. I enjoy my hot baths and central heating, but I
can’t help criticizing what has become, for many of our
children, a vacuous American lifestyle. Instead of creating
satisfying work, many of us have come to worship leisure. Our
houses have become little more than sleeping stations in which
we’re mesmerized and lulled to sleep by the blue lights of
television and glare of computers.
Not surprisingly, when
Frontier House ended and families returned to
life in this century, the participants had some problems adjusting.
A wealthy businessman didn’t like being away from his family
for long periods, nor did he like the lack of physical labor in his
job. Meanwhile, he and his family had moved into a huge house,
built while they were living in their one-room cabin.
“It
feels too big. Somebody can be in the house, and I don’t even
know it. I never felt that our cabin was too small,” the wife and
mother said.
The teenage girls, interviewed as they
lounged in the family swimming pool, described their lives as
“boring” compared to their wilderness experience. They said
they’d gained strength of character during their time in the
woods.
“I feel strong, and nobody’s going to tell
me what to do,” one girl said.
And what about the boy who
discovered his imagination? In the comfort of his luxurious house
he became obsessed with his PlayStation. “It’s boring here,”
he said.
Maybe human evolution hasn’t caught up
with culture, as some theorists put it. They say we possess hunting
and nesting instincts that are outdated and irrelevant in the
modern world. I see a different problem. When I look at humans as I
do other animals, I note a point at which populations peak and then
there’s a decline, whether from disease, starvation or
migration. Archaeologists and historians theorize about the demise
of ancient civilizations such as the Maya and the Roman Empire; in
both, excessive self-indulgence seemed to have played an important
role.
Boredom is what our children call the current
decadent peak, a pinnacle from which there is nothing to strive
for, just lists of empty rules and laws that have lost their
meaning. Escape from this emptiness drives us humans into desperate
behaviors, from taking drugs to eating and drinking too much.
You’d think as Westerners — and some of us
are descended from hearty pioneer stock — we’d have
survival skills to cope with anything, including too much of
everything.
What does it take to free ourselves? We can
choose to turn off our anesthetizing machines and do other things.
We can play with sticks, read books and write letters with ink on
paper. The Post Office still sells stamps. We can plant gardens and
harvest some of our own food. We can cook for friends and family
and learn to play the fiddle; we can feel independent enough to
paint our front doors purple.
Penelope Reedy is
a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News (hcn.org). She teaches English at Idaho
State University, plays a piano her pioneer grandmother bought
instead of a cow in 1910, and lives in Pocatello,
Idaho.
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