If Your Life is Boring, Appreciate it

Let us say you are living a life of boredom, depression, and lack of excitement. Then, one day, you go for your annual check-up. Another boring routine, right? And you are bored sitting in the doctor’s office watching a television channel you don’t like, or reading a magazine you don’t care about, or checking your Facebook feed. Finally, the nurse calls you in, takes your temperature, your height and weight as she has always done — another boring routine. The doctor comes in and she has the results of your previous tests. She opens the chart, pauses, and tells you: I am sorry to tell you, but you have colon cancer.

Instantly, you will wish you could get your old, boring, unexciting life back!

Only when you lose it, you appreciate the value of something you took for granted.

As G.K Chesterton cleverly wrote, “Until we realize that things might not be, we cannot realize that things are.”

I have had this revelation many times during the pandemic.

I wished I could go shopping and to restaurants without wearing a mask.

I wished I could go to a movie theater.

I wished I could travel by plane.

I wished I could take a cruise.

Before the pandemic, until December 2019, I could do all the above without any restrictions, but I didn’t do them. I complained about the boring nature of life then and refused or postponed doing things I wanted to do. But during the pandemic, I wished I could get that boring life of 2018 back!

In his book, One Minute Wisdom, my spiritual mentor Anthony de Mello tells a funny story that powerfully illustrates this point:

A disciple goes to his master and says:

“I am in desperate need for help — or I will go crazy. We are living in a single room — my wife, my children, and my in-laws. So, our nerves are on edge, we yell and scream at one another. The room is hell.”

“Do you promise to do whatever I tell you?” said the Maser gravely.

“I swear, I shall do anything.”

“Very well. How many animals do you have?”

“A cow, a goat, and six chickens.”

“Take them all into the room with you. Then come back after a week.”

The disciple was appalled. But he had promised to obey. So, he took the animals in. A week later he came back, a miserable man, moaning, “I’m a nervous wreck. The dirt! The stench! The noise! We’re all on the verge of madness!”

“Go back,” said the master, “and put the animals out.”

The man ran all the way home. And came back the following day, his eyes sparkling with joy.

“How sweet life is! The animals are out. The home is a paradise — so quiet and clean and roomy!”

An easy way to appreciate your boring life is by paying attention to your breathing and by being thankful that you can breathe.

On average, a person at rest takes about 16 breaths per minute. That means we take about 960 breaths an hour, 23,040 breaths a day, 8,409,600 a year. Of course, we don’t count them. We don’t even notice them. We take it for granted. Same old same old, until we lose the ability to breathe, then it is not same old anymore.

I had several patients on my hospice team with COPD who were dependent on portable oxygen. The oxygen tank is always humming in the room. They didn’t have the freedom to walk around because wherever they went, they had to take the tank with them.

One day I asked a patient: If I had a magic wand to grant you just one wish, what would it be?

“I wish I could breathe.”

That is all she wanted. She didn’t want more money, a luxury car, or expensive vacations. All she wanted was the ability to breathe freely.

If you can breathe freely, you already have an exciting life!