Being boring

I am boring. I don't doubt it. I'm not a sparkling conversationalist, usually monotone and dull or infuriatingly garrulous, so that you struggle either to drag an answer out of me or to get a word in edgeways. The former happens when I have nothing to say and don't know how to push the conversation along; the latter when I'm enthused about something to the exclusion of everything else (including whatever you want to talk about).

I mostly have nothing to talk about. I do not have an interesting religion. I don't have any at all; no beliefs of any kind. I do not even have the good taste to be Jewish. I am the same peasant my forebears were; none of them in living memory had any religion at all. Except my mother, who has in her time been a spiritualist, a Baptist, a Unitarian, a Hindu, a Buddhist and gods know what other types of believer.

I have no interesting philosophy. I have no firm views on what life is, what it is for or how it should be lived. I indulge mostly in a woolly-minded scepticism, a vague conviction that the pursuit of knowledge is worth while (although worth what I have never figured out). If pressed, I'd say that eudaimonia is a sensible goal for a human being. I am at the same time a resolute materialist and a believer in the human spirit. They don't make easy bedfellows.

Politically, I am a bleeding heart. I have a poorly thought-out notion of equity that I use as a lens to view the world. I think everyone should get a share but I have no good idea of how they can have it. I couldn't be a communist; the "proletariat" are too ferociously dim ever to be allowed actually to run things. I'd be better off without this idea of the world, because it is a lot easier to be a rightist (which is why many choose it as their politics). A belief that the individual is god allows everything to fall into place. Sadly, it does not stand up to even the briefest scrutiny. The individual is a construct of the society they are part of.

I do not have strong views on many things. I am pro-choice but against killing, agnostic but not antireligious, vegetarian but not a proselyte, not anything like a nationalist, although I do love my native land, against this, that and the other but unwilling to march, shout or punch anyone over it.

I am not at all fashionable. I do not like the latest thing, although I do sometimes have it. I like music but I don't follow it all that closely. I like some stuff you've probably never heard of but that's an outcome of catholic taste (or no taste at all) rather than a pursuit of the recherche. There are no Japanese thrash bands in my record collection, and no obscure fifteenth-century German harpsichord pieces. Not even any Stockhausen, although I do have a Steve Reich boxset.

I am poorly read in literature and become ever more so. When I read book of the year lists, I've only ever read one or two of them, if that. I often read half a book and then give up, bored. I tire of the books because I have become incapable of thinking about them. I am incapable of thinking about anything. If I feel thoughts arising, I drink more cheap red wine to kill them. They never lead anywhere good.

I do not have an interesting hobby. I started playing poker when it became popular and I am boringly useless at it. I read the web aimlessly and find nothing very interesting because I am clueless how to find good stuff. I take the occasional bushwalk but I am almost entirely unobservant and the only way I spot wildlife is when I trip over it or it bites me. I paint without any sign of talent and make music that would disgrace a small child, neither very often these days because inspiration just doesn't strike the boring on most days.

I have a boring life. It is only enlivened by domestic strife. Which is thoroughly boring in itself. I have been to the cinema once in a year, the theatre not at all in the three years I have been back in Brisbane. I eat out maybe once every three months. Most places to eat that I can afford are cookie-cutter, uninspired franchise joints, so I don't miss it. I have been to the football a couple of times this season but lacking company made it too joyless and the standard was just too poor to be worth spending $25 on.

But you know all this. You have read this blog and you know how boring I am, because I display exactly these qualities in my posts. Most people who read this blog have taken some opportunity or other to express it to me. Mind you, I am constantly reminded of the words of the Pet Shop Boys' song: we were never being bored because we were never being boring. I know I am bored because I am boring. Do you know it too?

posted by Dr Zen @ 8:54 am