Talking About Play While Thinking About Boredom

We’re talking with everyone about play. Everyone is having fun chatting. While I was pretending to participate in the discussion about play—at least with my words—I was actually thinking about “getting bored,” a concept that seemed to be at the opposite end of the spectrum.

I’d like to talk a little about my childhood. No matter what game I was playing, I was the kind of kid who would be the first to shout, “One, two, out!” and start a different game. Even when playing tag, I couldn’t concentrate for very long; if I was “it” and spotted the sandbox, I’d start playing in the sand. Even when playing hide-and-seek, if I found a pill bug where I was hiding, I’d start rolling it around and playing with it.In kindergarten, when we were told to “draw your favorite dish,” I started drawing, but then I saw a picture of osechi in a picture book and wanted to copy it exactly, so I ended up staying past closing time.Even in arts and crafts class, I’d start working on my own project without listening to the teacher or opening the instruction sheet, which often got me in trouble. My friends and teachers would say I was a hopeless case—someone who couldn’t stick with things or follow the rules—and that I’d surely run into trouble in the future. Taking those words at face value, I was constantly troubled by the question: “Why can’t I stick with the same activity for very long?”

My parents never restricted me in any way; they raised me to thrive, fully embracing the idea that I should “play freely and be yourself.” However, as I grew up, I came to realize that “getting bored” in daily life was seen as something that disrupted harmony and caused trouble for others—and I gradually began to view it as something inherently wrong.Trapped in the repetition and constraints of junior high, high school, and college, figuring out how to reconcile the idea that “it’s okay to play freely, but you mustn’t get bored right away” was a crucial issue for me.

Because of this disposition, even now there are times when I feel like I’m “about to get bored with life itself.” (How about you all?) A daily life devoid of new impulses, a world where everything is predictable, endlessly repeating routines—and myself and society, trapped in a cycle from which we can never escape. When I truly realize this, I feel a deep despair about the very act of living.I know people worry when I say things like this, but I can really relate to a passage from Kurt Cobain’s suicide note. I find myself on the verge of giving up, thinking that the world has always been—and will always be—utterly boring, and that no matter how much I struggle, I’ll never find true joy or happiness here.

For a very long time now, I haven’t felt any joy in listening to music, writing songs, or writing anything at all. Even backstage, after all the lights went out, even amid the screams of an ecstatic audience, I couldn’t feel the joy and delight that Freddie Mercury felt—the joy and delight he derived from the audience’s love and adoration.I think it’s truly admirable—and I envy—those who can do what Freddie Mercury did.

Even so, I think I still want to believe that the world is still full of fun and joy, more interesting than I could ever imagine, and that the future is a beautiful thing. Everyday life may be the very embodiment of a boring world, but I don’t want to give in to that despair.Precisely because I want to believe in the world’s potential and in human potential, I engage in playful pursuits that embody life—to discover, just one step beyond where I stand, a rich world where I’ll never grow tired of living.

A single human being is truly a tiny existence. That’s why I feel like the world has a conclusion. Even so, even if the world’s conclusion were decided from the very beginning, I want to stake this tiny life on playing—to overturn it, and to experience the joy of life in all its transparency and urgency.That’s why mere frivolity—where “it’s okay to play freely, and it’s okay to get bored right away”—isn’t enough for me. To be true to myself, I play with the determination to reshape my perception of the world. Even as I witness a world that seems bound to bore me, this is my way of staking my life once more; to me, play takes on the form of “playing with fire.”