A Terrible Bore

Alternate title: Much Ado About Nothing

Question: Is ‘boring’ the worst thing you can be?

Answer: No, not at all - but also sometimes, yes.

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I recently came across some speeches by Virginia Woolf, specifically the transcriptions of her commencement speeches given at Cambridge in 1928. This is when commencement speeches were very recently becoming a concept, so the whole tone is a bit daring in that sense. This is also when Cambridge had designated women’s and men’s colleges, the former of which was obviously Woolf’s audience. 

The general message of her words is that women must force themselves to set aside time during which they can be creative and pursue their passions, or else they will ceaselessly find themselves bound to obligations and expectations and duties. While her allusions may be outdated and those “expectations” look vastly different today from what they once were, the message resounds today. 

I hear myself saying it all the time: “there’s always something to do.” I see it on my calendar - the due dates and deadlines stretch on and on and on. Being creative rarely breaks the list of priorities, much less makes it to the top. I read it on my friends’ faces when they say all they’ve done for three hours is “rot in their beds” - the guilt is unspoken, but loud and invasive. We’ve reframed rest as something shameful. Why?

Well, if you’re not doing something, you’re doing nothing. If you don’t have something to show for your achievements, they count for nothing. If you never tell the world where you’ve been, you’ve gone nowhere. 

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Even though I completely understand why the concept of participation trophies is so irksome, I also feel for every single person who has ever wanted one. I empathize with the first person to ever come up with the idea of a participation trophy.

The bravest thing you can do these days is try. Cliche? Maybe. But perhaps the real issue is the ever-shifting definition of “try,” the standards of trying that seem to dip lower and lower. And to be clear, I don’t mean that we shouldn’t be creating a more accessible world. 

But trying, really trying, has to look like something. It can’t just be showing your face in a room. It should look like complete devotion, like throwing yourself into something wholeheartedly. To some, this is sleepless nights, and when you finally catch a glimpse of rest, you end up dreaming of the matter at hand anyway. To others, this is chapped lips and rough, ink-marked fingers, empty collections of energy drink bottles, and haphazard post-its strewn everywhere. To even others still, this is complete seclusion, utter lack of participation in society for days on end, forgetting to eat or sleep or even blink.

And after you’ve driven yourself to that point, and you walk into a room, and someone else picks up that first place trophy - someone who speaks like they knew they were bound to win first place all along, someone who whispers to you as if you’re both in on this great joke that they basically used this idea somewhere else last year so they didn’t even do anything, someone who doesn’t even have the courtesy to pretend they took this as seriously as you did - you might feel as though you deserve something. No matter how many times you tell yourself that everything you deserve comes to you eventually, and maybe this was just their day and not yours, you can’t stop yourself from wanting acknowledgement right now.

In my personal opinion, being handed a participation trophy in the middle of this desolate feeling would honestly just feel like adding insult to injury - I wouldn’t want any part in that.

But sometimes, it’s nice to have someone to tell you, “Hey. I know you tried. I saw you. It was worth it. This is not the end.” Maybe a participation trophy can say that.

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People close to me have teasingly called me boring for the past few years or so. I’m pretty sure it was always in jest. For the most part, this was something I could laugh off. I thought boring was hardly the worst thing someone could be. And so what if my life was quiet and eventless and a little nondescript? I had ambition and dreams and I knew a good amount about a lot of things and I had a tool belt of special/niche interests and I had a sincere passion for life and humanity and I genuinely believed that if someone got to know me, truly, then that was enough to make me interesting.

But these days I can’t bring myself to fully believe that.

I mean, really? Ambition? So another word for things you haven’t even accomplished yet? And how many times can you talk about that before even that starts to put people to sleep?

So more recently, while I still laugh when someone calls my life boring, it’s quite insincere. The comment burrows itself in my head, settles into this nest that’s been built up there filled with the general sentiment of “you are just so dull.”

I look at people while they’re talking and assume the worst.

They secretly hate me. They are so sick of this conversation. They think I live the most unimaginative lifestyle. They would rather be anywhere else on the planet.

If they’re saying it in jest, it has to stem from somewhere, right? As in what they really think of me?

I know this is a cruel thing to assume someone is thinking. But it’s not a feeling I can shake.

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There’s an art form that every girl my age seems to have mastered. The art of the morning debrief. Every weekend, it seems every college girl has had something happen, something worth a dramatic Sunday morning retelling. Something to make their friends’ jaws drop. I have yet to experience being on the storytelling end of this.

I know the reassurances someone older and wiser might give me - I think I’ve said most of them to myself in some capacity.

You don’t want to peak in college. You don’t want these to be the most interesting years of your life. If everyone only has a set quota of “interesting” they get to be in their lifetime, wouldn’t you rather save yours for later?

Well, yes, I suppose. However, I am not guaranteed those interesting days will come. I am only guaranteed right now and I want to live in the present - I don’t want to go back to being in a constant sense of ‘ready to fly away.’ And why do I have to settle for only having one or the other - why can’t I experience being interesting in the college sense and interesting in the career woman sense?

You can make yourself interesting. Now is the time to focus on yourself, focus on making those ambitions a reality.

Solid advice. I agree. I am trying but certainly, I could always stand to do more. I will. But again, am I meant to resign myself to the idea that I’m just not meant to be interesting in adolescent ways?

You don’t put yourself in ‘interesting’ scenarios. You can’t then get mad at yourself for not experiencing them.

Okay. Yes, true. Can’t argue with that one.

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Tell me it’s not just me. Do we all want to be a little more interesting? Does that arise from that deep desperation to not be forgettable? To have our names ingrained into posterity?

Is it only once we are old and have grandchildren to regale with stories that we realize we actually lived very full lives and every moment was captivating in its own way? Is that peace and contentment as inevitable as the restlessness and hunger for adventure?