Boredom 2020-style

One of the biggest worries for people in the UK and other developed countries in the current situation is boredom. We have so many types of entertainment at our disposal, and yet the one thing everyone wants to do at the moment is to go outside. Forget the convenience of online ordering; we want to go to the shops. We can make a cup of coffee at home but it's much more appealing to go out to a coffee shop with friends and spend an hour chatting. We can easily phone our relatives, but we would rather see them face to face. This gives me some optimism for the future of the human race. Perhaps, in the future, we will come to appreciate the natural world and the joys of physical contact more than we ever did.

Siegfried Sassoon talks about boredom sometimes in his memoirs. Very much an outdoor man in his youth, he realised on arriving at the Western Front what other soldiers also mentioned - the boredom of being in the trenches, alternating as it did with short periods of extreme danger and horror. Officers were obliged to invent monotonous tasks to keep their men occupied - filling sandbags, cleaning out the latrines, etc. It was critical to keep up their morale. I like this quote from the letters of Max Staniforth (1893-1985), who wrote:

The only way to be here is to be philosophical. We have evolved a philosophy accordingly. What do you think of it?
If you are a soldier, you are either:
(1) at home or (2) at the Front.
If (1), you needn’t worry.
If (2), you are either (1) out of the danger zone or (2) in it.
If (1), you needn’t worry.
If (2), you are either (1) not hit, or (2) hit.
If (1), you needn’t worry.
If (2) you are either (1) trivial or (2) dangerous.
If (1), you needn’t worry.
If (2), you either (1) live or (2) die.
If you live, you needn’t worry: and – If you die, YOU CAN’T WORRY!!
So why worry?

When we think about how much worse off we could be, we inevitably feel guilty about complaining of boredom, but I feel sure it won't take long for us to forget. In years to come, we'll be telling our children about the time we had to stay indoors for a few weeks and how hard it was. And they won't understand...