From time to time, when my life gets too hectic, I wish for a few hours of boredom. As often happens, it’s a very platonic wish, one I don’t actually mean, because I find boredom awful.

I remember that my last experience with boredom was sometime in the summer when it rained non-stop for three weeks and we couldn’t play outside. I was a child back then, and there was no digital entertainment.

The rain didn’t bother me because we had built a makeshift table tennis table with the neighbor boys in our attic, with help from my father. It was made of two wooden planks that my father no longer needed, placed on a garden table and an old sewing machine. The wooden planks were shorter and narrower than a normal table tennis table, but that didn’t bother us. We felt like professionals in training camp. We played from morning until evening, interrupted only by breaks for lunch and dinner. We had no tutorial or guide on how to play the game; what we learned was through trial and error. My father explained the rules for scoring.

In that rainy summer, I learned to play table tennis decently. But on that one day, the neighbor boys had to go with their parents to visit their aunt, and I was left alone. I was bored, and I still remember that feeling of boredom to this day, even after decades. That was the last time. Since then, I’ve used the free time I have in many ways, and my problem is more the endless possibilities of what I could do – but unfortunately, they don’t fit into a day that only has 24 hours. For example, I wonder why my nightstand is still standing, even though it’s weighed down with all the unread books I absolutely have to read. Usually, when one book is taken away, two new ones come along. All these cultural offers almost drive me crazy because I keep discovering new things happening at the same time, and I have to choose. One could continue with examples like this for a long time.

However, I’ve realized that at some point in life, a phase will come where boredom, like in childhood, may return. My mother, a former math teacher, who is gradually losing her mobility but whose mind is as sharp as it was 20 years ago, begins to get bored in the winter when social contacts become sparse. Despite digital options and despite her ability to exchange ChatGPT for Perplexity, as a more researched and detailed AI. My mother, over 80, has no fear of the digital world and navigates it very skillfully. But the lack of social contacts and interaction with people in the flesh and blood, and especially their absence, makes her feel lonely and bored. Nevertheless, she manages to go to the library every week and borrow six new books, which she reads in one week.

I have been closely observing my mother for about ten years and want to know the details of her problems. Not that I could really help her – most of the time, she still helps herself and solves her problems with the help of digital assistants. But it’s selfish. If I’m lucky, I will have to deal with similar issues as she does. What’s coming my way? How can I prepare for it?

From all these observations, a clear solution comes to mind: a network. The bigger, the better. Ideally, one should continuously expand it, especially with age groups that differ significantly from one’s own. Because with my friends, boredom never strikes. Like last week, when we had arranged to meet for lunch, and by quarter past twelve, my friend still wasn’t there. When I called her to ask where she was, she told me that lunch was actually tomorrow, on Thursday. I had to convince her that today was already Thursday. But this can really only happen to someone who works from home, like she does. As a result, I got to meet the gentleman at the next table, whose guest was also late. Now, that’s not boredom.