When sloth isn’t a sin
I was watching a rather unsettling film called “Se7en” that my friend suggested to me. Well, I usually do not take his recommendations into consideration, but he told me it was starring Brad Pitt, and I decided to give it a go. The movie explored the Seven Deadly Sins, and it was nothing short of a haunting specter, something I will never forget, but I remember being especially haunted by the portrayal of sloth: a man so passive, so stock-still, he was considered worse than dead. To me, that was not very terrifying; it actually made me wonder: is sloth really the moral sin we think it is? Have we misunderstood the fundamentals?
The scene lingered with me; I thought and thought, and over time, the question I had evolved into a bigger one- about what we owe to future generations. We don’t just owe them survival, clean air, economic security, human needs, etc., but also something a little more evasive, such as the mental space to imagine and reflect. I began to think of sloth as boredom, not laziness, and I realized that boredom is one of the most important gifts we can pass on.
Boredom is Extinct?
In today’s world, some might even say that boredom is extinct. Every single empty moment is filled with screens and content, and just like that, we have built a culture where being bored feels unacceptable. Waiting in a line? Scroll. Stuck in a bus? Scroll. Boring lecture? Scroll. At this point, we are taught to fear silence as if it were mere failure.
I was reading an article from Literary Hub where Manoush Zombordi argues that you can’t have creativity without boredom. Without the necessary downtime, our brain is incapable of making original connections. Therefore, a surprising revelation has given me an idea that boredom is the mind’s canvas: blankness to create something new. Now, if you go without this ‘canvas’, you restrict yourself to become a mere consumer, not a thinker.
A boarding school revelation
At every school, there are these really long, rather dull stretches of time. Sports was initially my identity when I first arrived until I was quickly humbled. I remember when people kept shouting at me, “Pass the damn ball.” I didn’t listen. I was angry. I was left isolated. And eventually, left all alone. But it was in one of those quiet stretches of time, that my friend simply broke things down for me. No drama, just plain truth. I realized I had been too caught up in my ego. That time, to just be me, was like a crack to open a door that I didn’t even know was closed.
Just like the silent notes in music, where the melody is truly heard, nothing truly valuable ever comes in the midst of chaos; it comes in the pause.
The creative silence of the past
We often tend to forget that boredom is actually the groundwork from which geniuses often grow. Take Issac Newton; some might say the most intelligent person to walk the Earth. What happened? Apple falls. Gravity happens. Simple, right? Well, wrong. We often skip the context that Newton was home from Cambridge because of the infamous plague. He had absolutely nothing to do. And in that space of nothingness, his mind connected a falling fruit to the cosmos. The Beatles had a similar story, too. Before coming into the limelight, they played endless repeated sets in half-empty clubs, the same songs over and over again. Sounds monotonous, right? Well, that’s the beauty of boredom. Boredom forced them to experiment, which led to ground-breaking innovations.
What we owe and what we must stop stealing
So, let’s be clearer, to future persons we owe more than just reduced emissions and economic growth, we also owe them the right to be bored. This is what creates thinkers, artists and even philosophers. Without this ‘phenomenon’ nobody would’ve written Hamlet, or discovered gravity, or thought to ask questions at all.
At this rate, what we are doing is creating a future that has no space for this wandering thought. And, the only reason we are doing so is to please the living persons, which is ourselves. And if we continue this way we are being highly short-sighted.
A final pause
In the movie Se7en, which inspired me to write this essay, sloth is shown in a horrifying manner because it represents the absence of will. But I have come to an understanding that true, chosen stillness is an act of immense willpower. And maybe, it is the most generous thing, we can offer to the future.
Let them think. Let them wander. Let them be bored.