Amusements

Boredom is a universally dreaded feeling. Being bored means wanting to be engaged when you can’t. Boredom is a different experience from the idleness of downtime or relaxation. Being bored means wanting to be engaged when you can’t, which is an uncomfortable feeling.

In one famous experiment, people were asked to sit quietly for 15 minutes in a room with nothing but their own thoughts. They also had the option to hit a button and give themselves an electric shock.

Getting physically shocked is unpleasant, but many people preferred it to the emotional discomfort of boredom. Out of 42 participants, nearly half opted to press the button at least once, even though they had experienced the shock earlier in the study and reported they would pay money to avoid experiencing it again.

Social psychologist Erin Westgate said, “Boredom is sort of an emotional dashboard light that goes off saying, like, ‘Hey, you’re not on track. It is this signal that whatever it is we’re doing either isn’t meaningful to us, or we’re not able to successfully engage with this.”

Boredom plays a valuable role in how people set and achieve goals. It acts as a catalyst by bringing together different parts of our brain — social, cognitive, emotional, or experiential memory. So, when we’re firing on all neurons, we’re at our most imaginative and making connections we otherwise never would have.

So go be bored, and encourage your kids to be bored too. Maybe you’ll find a new and creative “Eureka!” moment in your life, or imagine a great big new future for yourself or the world. Boredom is a worthwhile adventure.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Boredom can play a valuable role in how you set and achieve goals. Use it to motive you to action! 1) Meditation; Prayer - Don’t reach for your smartphone or the streaming device the next time you are forced to wait. Instead, use this time to set your mind on God: Read the Word, pray, meditate on God as revealed in nature. Destress yourself by centering your thoughts on God. 2) Help; Loving others; Service - You can also shift your focus toward others and their needs. Who can you help today?

Googly eyes have been appearing on sculptures around the central Oregon city of Bend, delighting many residents and sparking a viral sensation covered widely by news outlets. On social media, the city shared photos of googly eyes on installations in the middle of roundabouts that make up its so-called “Roundabout Art Route.” One photo shows googly eyes placed on a sculpture of two deer, while another shows them attached to a sphere.

A Facebook post received hundreds of comments, with many users saying, “We love the googly eyes. This town is getting to be so stuffy. Let’s have fun!”

Now, after months of speculation, the mystery of the googly eyes has finally been solved. Jeff Keith is the founder of the nonprofit Guardian Group that combats human trafficking. But in his free time Keith apparently also battles boredom, because he claimed responsibility for placing googly eyes on public art sculptures around the city of Bend, Oregon.

Keith, who used duct tape to attach the googly eyes, admitted, “It’s a (way) for me to cope with some pretty heavy stuff," Keith said to an AP reporter. He noted the "unimaginable trauma" that many of the trafficking victims he's worked with have experienced.

The city of Bend shared photos of the googly-eye-decorated art, noting that adhesives can damage the art. According to city officials, eight sculptures were affected, and it cost $1,500 to remove all the googly eyes.

Keith said he didn’t anticipate the attention and offered to pay for any damages. After he came forward, a spokesperson for the city said its post had been misunderstood, and that the intention was to raise awareness about the damage adhesives can do to public art.

Keith hopes his pranks bring humor to people's lives. “I think the biggest thing is, for me, just to get a laugh,” he said. “When I come up on these roundabouts and I see families laughing, like hysterically laughing at these, it makes for a good time.”

Editor’s Note: You can see an example of the googly eyes here

Possible Preaching Angle:

While it is never a good idea to deface public art or buildings, we can appreciate the attempt to bring humor into people’s lives. As Proverbs says, “a cheerful heart is good medicine” (Prov. 17:22).

So, laughter really is the best medicine. A mere chuckle is enough to expand cardiac tissue and increase the flow of oxygen throughout the body, thus exercising a weakened heart, according to a new study.

Scientists in Brazil set out to prove that “laughter therapy” can improve cardiovascular health and ease symptoms of heart disease. Professor Marco Saffi said, “Our study found that laughter therapy increased the functional capacity of the cardiovascular system.”

Researchers looked at 26 adults, at an average age of 64 who had previously been diagnosed with coronary artery disease. Every week for three months, half of the group viewed comedy programs while the other half watched serious documentaries about topics such as the Amazon rainforest or politics.

Results showed that the group who watched comedies had a 10% advancement in the amount of oxygen the heart could pump into the body as well as an improvement in their arteries’ ability to expand. Blood testing also detected notable reductions in inflammatory biomarkers, which can indicate if people are at risk for heart attack or stroke and show how much plaque is built up in blood vessels.

It’s believed that laughter has this effect because it releases endorphins, which are needed to maintain healthy blood pressure and reduce strain on the heart by keeping stress hormones low. Saffi said, “This study found that laughter therapy is a good intervention that could help reduce that inflammation and decrease the risk of heart attack and stroke. People should try to do things that make them laugh at least twice a week. Laughing helps people feel happier overall.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Scripture foretold these findings many years ago. We read in Proverbs, “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones” (Prov. 17:22). A happy heart produces good health, but a heavy spirit can drag you down.

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian Holocaust survivor, neurologist, psychiatrist, and author. His writings on man’s search for meaning in the face of horrors like the Holocaust made him a highly regarded source for thoughts on the subject. When life’s trials and sufferings are overwhelming, how and where can meaning be found? He lived when global consumerism was at its beginnings. In this analogy, he asserts that consumerism’s offerings of pleasure, as well as other types of pleasure, do not and cannot contribute to any useful meaning or understanding of life:

Let us imagine a man who has been sentenced to death and, a few hours before his execution, has been told he is free to decide on the menu for his last meal. The guard comes into his cell and asks him what he wants to eat, offers him all kinds of delicacies; but the man rejects all his suggestions. He thinks to himself that it is quite irrelevant whether he stuffs good food into the stomach of his organism or not, as in a few hours it will be a corpse. And even the feelings of pleasure that could still be felt in the organism’s cerebral ganglia seem pointless in view of the fact that in two hours they will be destroyed forever.

But the whole of life stands in the face of death, and if this man had been right, then our whole lives would also be meaningless, were we only to strive for pleasure and nothing else—preferably the most pleasure and the highest degree of pleasure possible. Pleasure in itself cannot give our existence meaning; thus, the lack of pleasure cannot take away meaning from life, which now seems obvious to us.

The essential point is that when suffering is crushing and life holds no luster, our lack of enjoyment of life’s pleasures should not doom us to meaninglessness and despair.

East Syracuse Minoa High field hockey coach Kate Harris challenged her players, who were all dedicated and focused, to loosen up a bit. Harris said, “I had called them ‘boring’ the other day. They are very quiet this year. I am used to having a very loud team. I pretty much told them to let their weirdness out.”

As a team, they formally accepted the challenge. Literally. At the start of one of the ensuing practices, the entire team showed up decked out in formal wear, wearing either shirts-and-ties or brightly colored prom dresses.

Senior Kodi Smith thought up the idea in the aftermath of a loss. Searching for a way to switch things up, she began texting her teammates, who then began texting back pictures of potential outfits to wear. Senior Olivia Grabowski said, “At first we were all like, is she being serious? It was definitely a joke at first. I’m happy that the joke turned into something happening.”

The practice turned into a prelude for their annual tradition of dressing up in costume for a Halloween practice, wherein players in different student classes pick themes with which to adhere and coordinate. After the success of their impromptu dress-up day, Smith acknowledges that it might be tough to raise the bar, creatively speaking. “The seniors have ideas. We’re going to figure it out. We’re going to go all out, definitely.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even in hard times, we do well to find ways to inject fun and levity into life, so that we are not too often overcome by grief and heaviness.

In the 1920s, the American Tobacco Company wanted to make their main brand, Lucky Strike, stand out from the other tobacco products on the market. So, they hired an advertising expert named Albert Lasker. In his book The Attention Merchants, here’s how author Tim Wu describes Lasker’s strategy:

Lucky Strike was presented as a health tonic—specifically, a cure for the problem of sore throats caused by most cigarettes. With a new claim that roasting “removes harmful irritants that cause throat irritation,” including “harmful corrosive acids.” The Lucky Strike slogan became: “your throat protection … Against irritation … Against cough.” There was even a secret process involved: “the toasting process includes the use of the ultraviolet ray … heat purifies and so toasting—that extra, secret process—removes harmful irritants that cause throat irritation and coughing.”

To drive home the hygienic benefit, Lasker ran a “precious voice” campaign, with testimonials from opera stars and other singers … [He also recruited doctors to tout the health benefits of smoking Lucky Strikes.] One advertisement features a doctor in a white coat holding up a packet, with a copy: “20,679 physicians say Luckies are less irritating … Your throat protection.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the same way, the world, the flesh, and the devil will take something that pollutes or kills our spiritual life and try to convince us that it’s actually good for us.

Here's how the best-selling author Michael Crichton described our need to be constantly entertained:

Today, everybody expects to be entertained, and they expect to be entertained all the time… . Everyone must be amused, or they will switch: switch brands, switch channels, switch parties, switch loyalties. This is the intellectual reality of Western society [today]. In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But [now] they want to be entertained. The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom.

The trouble with trouble is that it usually starts out as a whole lot of fun.

Where did we come up with this concept of "spare time," anyway? Is there any time for which we aren't accountable to God? Is there any time during which God doesn't care what you are doing? No Christian has ever had spare time. You may have spare time from labor or necessity, you may stop working and refresh yourself, but no Christian ever had time off from living like a Christian.

I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that He has a sense of humor.

Most successful football players are free to perform at their best only when they know what the expectations are, where the limits stand. I see this as a biblical principle that also applies to life, a principle our society as a whole has forgotten; you can't enjoy true freedom without limits.

Pastors hear news all the time. Some of it's good, and some of it's, well, not so good...

GOOD NEWS:

Now that you have an associate, you don't have to prepare a sermon every Sunday. BAD NEWS:

She can preach better than you can.

GOOD NEWS:

Your church's new recovery group is well attended. BAD NEWS:

Your spouse and kids are in it.

GOOD NEWS:

The board voted for a staff salary increase. BAD NEWS:

The church janitor got it.

GOOD NEWS:

Your church is getting lots of free publicity recently. BAD NEWS:

It's on the crime-reports page.

GOOD NEWS:

Your youth director is finally getting kids to attend church. BAD NEWS:

They're going to the church down the street.

GOOD NEWS:

With your new wireless microphone, everybody can understand your sermons. BAD NEWS:

The hard-of-hearing suddenly discover they disagree with you.

GOOD NEWS:

People have caught the vision for church growth. BAD NEWS:

Now they ask why it's not happening.

GOOD NEWS:

The people missed you during your vacation. BAD NEWS:

They also missed attending church and giving their tithes.

GOOD NEWS:

The new donated computer is loaded with all the latest technological advances... BAD NEWS:

... for 1983.

I was watching my 5-year-old granddaughter Christy play with her dolls. At one point, she "staged" a wedding, first playing the role of the bride's mother who assigned specific duties, then suddenly becoming the bride with her "teddy bear" groom.

She picked him up and said to the "minister" presiding over the wedding, "Now you can read us our rights." Without missing a beat, Christy became the minister who said, "You have the right to remain silent, anything you say may be held against you, you have the right to have an attorney present. You may kiss the bride."