Descartes and The Fly

An Argument for Boredom

There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people – G.K. Chesterton

The year is 1637. The time is noon. And our hero – the famous French philosopher, Rene Descartes – is still in bed. Now, while this might seem like peculiar behaviour for such a pivotal figure, it just so happens that Descartes is known to have done some of his best work in bed (and no, not like that).

See, legend has it that while Descartes was lying in bed, he found himself absent-mindedly watching a fly crawl about his ceiling. This led Descartes to wonder how he could best describe the fly’s location. What Descartes realised was that he could pin-point the fly’s position on the ceiling by using the walls as reference points. And it was this seemingly trivial wondering that inspired our hero to come up with the Cartesian Coordinate System. Which for those who flunked maths in high school is fancy-nerd-speak for a type of graph. Now don’t worry, I’m not using this story as a sneaky segue into some uninspired piece about graphs. Instead, what interests me about this story is the way the discovery was made: by being bored enough to watch a fly.

Here's a rather strange statement that I’m going to convince you is true: everyone can benefit from boredom.  

This is because boredom doesn’t exist independently. Instead, boredom is intrinsically linked to wonder. You could even say they are two sides of the same coin. Don’t believe me? Then, try my little experiment…

Next time you’re bored refrain from reaching for your phone, turning on Netflix, or defaulting to any of the other entertainment devices we all use to distract ourselves and the first thing you’ll notice is that boredom thrusts you straight into wonder. You’ll wonder about what to do next, you’ll wonder about what’s in the fridge, you’ll wonder about what happened to that weird kid from school, and you’ll probably even wonder how long this annoying writer wants you to do his silly experiment. And what you’ll find is that if you do this experiment for longer than a few minutes the more out-there your musings will become. The more your mind will open. The more curiosity will take hold. And the more you will start to wonder about things you normally overlook.

This is the first benefit of boredom: it reconnects us with our child-like sense of wonder. It reignites that bright-eyed perspective we had as kids. It is through this lens that we can once again find endless fascination in the seemingly mundane. We can see the majesty of the world as we once did. We can appreciate the organic patterns in our wooden table, the splendour of sunlight shining through our window, the amazing craftsmanship of our humble little home, or the magnificent movements of a fly. And as it so happens for Henry David Thoreau even the glory of an ant fight…  

Thoreau is most well-known for his remarkable book Walden. Which he wrote during a two-year period living alone in the woods. In this masterful piece of literature Thoreau repeatedly extoled the value of slowing down enough to wonder. He talked about watching the lake that overlooked his cabin change with the seasons. He talked about his slow yet rewarding experience of tilling the land so he could grow his own food. He talked about the long days he spent hiking through the vast woodlands that surrounded his little abode. And in one particularly captivating piece of prose he told the story of coming across two ants that were “engaged in deadly combat”. Here is a spellbinding snippet of that 3-page tale:

You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns… I watched a couple [of ants] that were fast locked in each other’s embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the [wood] chips, now at noon-day prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to his adversary’s front, and through all the tumblings on that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, having already caused the other to go by the board; while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and as I saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members. They fought with more pertinacity than bulldogs. Neither manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident that their battle-cry was Conquer or die.

What Thoreau’s tale-of-the-ants highlighted for me was that by embracing the boredom that comes from living a slow-paced lifestyle – he was able to not only find wonder in the seemingly mundane, but to also use that wonder as the inspiration for new creative works.

This leads us to the second benefit of boredom: it enables us to uncover new ideas, new insights, and new inspiration for our creative projects. After all, it was Thoreau’s fascination with some trivial thing that most of us would have looked right past, that inspired him to write that magnetic piece of literature that has been captivating people ever since.

The best way to come up with new ideas is to get really bored – Neil Gaiman 

As it turns out boredom does a lot more than just make flies and ants fascinating. There is research that suggests boredom played an important evolutionary role: it motivated humans to seek out new lands, new food sources, and new mates.

This is the third benefit of boredom: it is a catalyst for exploration. It is the fuel that drives us to seek out novelty. It is that compelling force that motivates us to search out answers to all the weird questions our wondering provokes. And since the lands, food sources, and – for us lucky one’s – mates, are already sorted, this motivation to explore is often let loose on the internet’s endless rabbit holes. After all, it is only by being sufficiently bored that one is compelled to Google “who invented the Comic Sans font?”. And let me tell you, there is a rather riveting mini documentary on YouTube, by the YouTube channel Struthless (shout out to that dude) where he tracks the strangely enthralling origin of fonts. What that documentary proved to me is that not only are fonts fascinating, but that boredom cures itself if it’s embraced. Because if you are brave enough to sit with your boredom it is inevitable that sooner or later you will be pulled from your seat by a compelling idea that you just have to explore. In fact, it’s evolutionarily assured.  

There is another reason to embrace boredom: resisting it is dangerous. By running from boredom, we are implicitly acknowledging that our imagination, our curiosity, and our inquisitiveness is not sufficient to entertain us. That to entertain ourselves we must escape ourselves. And no matter what form of escapism we choose – that shit never ends well. But that’s not the only danger of resisting boredom: if we are stuck in some habitual trap of running from our boredom, then we never give ourselves a chance to wonder why we became bored in the first place. We never give ourselves a chance to look at our lives and question why we are getting bored when there is so much incredible stuff to experience. Because the uncomfortable truth is: if we find ourselves bored all the time, it’s not because our inner world or the world out there is actually boring, but rather that the way we have come to meet these things is boring. I mean, people who are doing what they are passionate about are never bored. Instead, they are so engrossed in their passion projects that they have to actively push themselves to take a break every once in a while. And so, for those who do find themselves perpetually bored – that should be a wake-up call. It should be seen as a nudge from boredom that maybe it’s time to change whatever you’re doing, so that you can start pursuing what you love. This is arguably the biggest benefit of boredom: it can be the impetus we need to course correct.

Whichever way you look at it, boredom is a good thing with a host of benefits. But somewhere along the line we forgot that. We forgot that boredom is a doorway to wonder. We forgot that boredom is a lightning-rod for new ideas, new insights, and the inspiration for new creative projects. We forgot that boredom is a catalyst for exploration. And we forgot that boredom is a wake-up call reminding us to pursue what we love. This is why Descartes is the hero of our story: because I believe the true gift he was trying to give us that day as he laid about in bed watching that fly, was not those graphs – but rather the boredom those graphs so reliably produce.