Beyond boredom and over-stimulation
Might boredom and excitement be two sides of the same coin? Self-centered pursuits can feel exciting and satisfying. But they can lead to time-consuming bingeing or even send us on an endless quest for ever more extreme expressions of whatever we feel is stimulating. And if those pursuits are what excite us, without them, we can find ourselves bored.
Having “been there and done that” in both those ways, I found a way out that isn’t a bland neutrality but a whole new way of living a fulfilling life. Looking up and out from a world of material highs and lows through the study and practice of Christian Science, I found a steadier joy that we can each awaken to—a calm, satisfied, true sense of God and what God means to us.
A thought picture painted in the Bible’s book of Isaiah contradicts the perception of life as a patchwork of material highs and lows. Prophesying the coming of Jesus, it says, “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain” (40:4). To Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, those words refer to flattening the mountains of selfishness and uplifting the valleys of sin to prepare the highway of God (see Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 61).
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