On Being Bored

At church on Sunday, Brother Magana, the first counselor in our branch presidency, was going over Bill/Dad's travel plans for this week. It's a pretty typical week. He left for Pleasanton Sunday evening and will return to Bakersfield on Wednesday evening. Brother Magana turned to me and said, "You like to be alone so much?" I explained to him that I don't like to be alone, but I enjoy having time to work on my various projects. I told him that "I am sometimes lonely, but rarely bored." Since that conversation, I have been thinking about what I told him. All of us feel lonely at times. We can feel lonely even when there are other people around. As a young mother of five, I was surrounded by "people" but I was often lonely. I think that loneliness is simply the state of having no one to spontaneously share our thoughts with. Loneliness doesn't automatically equate to sadness, though. Sometimes we are sad and lonely, but I believe that that is because we are bored. I go to great lengths to avoid becoming bored. It is key to my personal satisfaction with life. I read a great quote this week in the Reader's Digest. "Always be in the middle of a great book and you'll never be in a bad or bored mood."

I am currently in the middle of two good books; "A Heart Like His," by Virginia Hinckley Pearce and "Withering Heights," by Dorothy Cannell. The first is my Sunday read. It is a short book and a very thought-provoking read. It is based on the experience of a group of women planning a stake Relief Society conference. They wanted to help the sisters in the stake feel God's love more profoundly in their lives. They wanted to help them do that without introducing a new program or more things to "do." They devised a simple experiment to try within their group before they brought it before the sisters in the stake. Each chapter chronicles what happened, with a paragraph at the end for discussion and pondering where you are in the challenge. It is a perfect book for two or more sisters to read together and discuss. It would make a great mid-week activity, for example. Virginia Pearce has served on the general Primary and YW boards and is the daughter of President Hinckley. She wrote a couple of books about her mother, Marjorie Pay Hinckley.

My other current read is a mystery (of course) by Dorothy Cannell, who has written ten books in her Ellie Haskell series. Her new book comes after a five-year break in which she set aside writing to spend more time with her grandchildren. Her books are English "cozies," with a twist. They are contemporary and filled with hilarious characters. They are extremely witty and highly enjoyable. These are not dark, psychologically-driven works (which I also enjoy). If you want to start the series, you have to begin at the beginning with "The Thin Woman," so that you can understand Ellie and why it is so easy to relate to her.

So, this is my salute to reading. I highly recommend it as a defense against boredom and bad moods.