until six weeks ago, the monkey was a strict observer of naptime. to say that he was an “observer” of nap time is to say that he spent two hours per day holed up in his room. sometimes he slept, but most of the time he invented games for himself to play within his four walls.

for example, it was not uncommon for me to open his door after naptime to find a “puzzle piece room,” a carefully created state of affairs wherein the entire floor was covered in adjacent blankets, er, i mean “puzzle pieces.” other days were “sorting days,” and the monkey would spend the two hours organizing and cataloging his stuffed animals, game pieces, markers, and books. still other afternoons were spent “reading.” once, i walked in on this scene:

but times are different now. i gave in to the monkey’s complaints that he was bored in his room, and now, while his brother sleeps, he does things that require much less imagination (many of which involve the television and/or the wii). perhaps this is because i have not made the shift away from cooking dinner, folding laundry, and catching up on work between the hours of two o’clock and four o’clock. or perhaps it is because the monkey and i are both drawn to what is easier. for him, making a puzzle piece room takes more effort than wii bowling. and for me, extracting him from the tv takes more effort than cooking dinner in peace.

the problem with this scenario is that i don’t want to deprive the monkey of the gift of boredom. catherine newman, author of an essay entitled bored again, which appeared in the fall 2010 issue of brainchild magazine, defines boredom as “that agitated space between relaxation and action: dialed down, it can become a pleasant kind of inertia or a meditative stillness, where it feels good to sit quietly with your own thoughts; cranked up a notch, it can produce creative release.” newman goes on to write,

“i’m not trying to sound like one of those crafty-mama blogs that makes you want to kill yourself, the kind you bookmark one day because you think that putting out a wooden bowl of felt gnomes sounds like a good idea… and yet. you do have to learn boredom, learn to live with it, to manage it with the power of your own mind, without recourse to video games or bungee jumping or sniffing glue or starting a nuclear war or date raping your roommate’s girlfriend. the most dangerous people we know are the least able to sit still, to be inside an absence of motion.”

i definitely don’t want the monkey to become “a dangerous person,” but that’s not my main attraction to boredom. i simply think that boredom facilitates creativity and imagination, and these things are what ultimately make life beautiful.

our family spends significant periods of time away from our memphis routines and addictions to technology. our family camp weekends and julys in the north carolina mountains are hopefully deterrents from future glue-sniffing tendencies. but building boredom into our daily memphis routine, one that must also include my own significant accomplishments on the home and work fronts, is becoming increasingly difficult.

is there any way to give the monkey the gift of boredom (and creativity and imagination and beauty) without forcing him to play with a wooden bowl of felt gnomes?

there’s a little book on my shelf called present moment, wonderful moment by spiritual teacher thich nhat hanh. on every page, there’s a short meditation encouraging readers to live life in the present moment. ordinary activities like hand-washing, teeth-brushing, tea-drinking and laundry-folding are re-framed as potential moments of prayer and gratitude.

next to that book sits my camera, a birthday gift from my husband that truly has revolutionized the images i’ve been able to capture of my kids, who are growing up like little weeds before my very eyes. only, let’s be real. my camera is never just sitting on the shelf these days beside a book about meditation. it has quite the social calendar, filled with walks, vacations, picnics, holiday gatherings, dates with the charger, and hook-ups with my hard drive. 

the problem is, now when i am out enjoying glorious spring weather with my family, and the monkey settles into a posture of rare stillness under a tree and beside a lake, for example, i have two conflicting voices that battle it out in my head. thich nhat hanh says, “live fully into this present moment. use it as a prayer for thanksgiving.” on the other hand, that old kodak commercial asserts itself with the push to drop everything and run for my camera. since i cannot laminate my children and preserve these precious years for all eternity, i feel the need to at least capture moments here and there. poor thich nhat hanh. i rarely ever listen to him.

in their book, i was a really good mom before i had kids, trisha ashworth and amy nobile write, “…our children…look to us to figure out how to enjoy their own lives, to decide what’s valuable in their days. do you want your children to think of a rainbow as a photo op or do you want them to learn how to pause and appreciate the beauty that’s before them right now” (161)?

ashworth and nobile make a good point. i want my children to be able to enjoy beauty without having to take it home or own it or freeze it in a still frame. on the other hand, my dabblings in photography have also actually helped me to look more closely at the intricate harmony in the natural world. with camera in hand, i’m much more likely to lie down in the cool grass to see something from a different angle or notice how much sweeter a sunset is with a little blond monkey curl in the foreground. i want my children to embrace this way of seeing as well.

but what i’ll probably end up passing along to the next generation is the tension i feel between capturing moments and living them. in a world filled with such beauty, surely this befuddlement is all part of experiencing the awe. it makes me sad to think that someday, the monkey won’t remember how to stand under a brilliant tree next to a lake and smile at the wonders of nature. but maybe then he’ll do as i have done, and let the camera lead him back into the way of appreciation.

[my sister-in-law is the subject of the first picture in this post. she shares the tension i describe above, and the two of us are often mistaken for tourists at family gatherings. also, the sources for this post can be found on the bibliography page located on the sidebar to your right.]