It seems like an unpopular opinion, but now that I've reached adulthood, I actually kind of feel this way... Though I wouldn't phrase it as insultingly. It's 2017: There's a big wide world out there of free and cheap hobbies and opportunities to learn. All it takes is time, which if you're bored, you generally have.
Fwiw, in my case what I used to think was boredom was actually an unrecognized anxiety disorder and associated anhedonia. I got a diagnosis but decided to treat it myself (mainly with meditation and sleep hygiene) and the concept of boredom has pretty much vanished from my life.
Nah, I'm pretty sure he just wanted to encourage me to come up with ways to entertain myself. Thus, my childhood hobbies included building a city out of empty kleenex boxes for a family of little pieces of wool to live in; recording songs off the radio onto cassette tapes and coming up with indexing strategies to keep track of them in notebooks; and soaking every plant I could find in rubbing alcohol to find out which ones made dye I could paint with. Weird kid, what can I say.
Sounds like you spent your time exploring creative pursuits. That's worthwhile. Seems like a fun childhood. I believe that it is important to stave off boredom with creative, rather than consumptive activities.
I think you mean you'll project it everywhere. I say this to my kids as well, not to signal anything but to engage their creativity. A lot of kids these days can't figure anything to do if they don't have a device in their hands. I had to routinely ride in a car for 8+ hours as a kid and mobile devices either didn't exist or were so expensive as to may as well not exist. A lot of my creativity today stems from techniques I developed in those times.
Only this case, despite following the syntactic form, has nothing to do with this pattern.
For one, it's not about signaling superiority (which is what the pattern is all about) -- it's merely advice. The sayer (?) is not claiming they are exciting themselves, just that being bored is a sign of not recognizing opportunities to be engaged with something.
(Also, in the general case, the presence of the pattern or the snobbism of the one saying it, doesn't mean it's also wrong).
There's a scene in HBO's Westworld which revolves around this.
"My father used to say that only boring people get bored [...] I used to think it's only boring people who don't feel boredom, or cannot conceive of it in others."
I personally like the idea that only boring people can't conceive of boredom.
Neither boredom nor never being bored is a sign of a boring personality. But for me, the spirit of OP's quote is that if you're intellectually curious, you can almost always find something to explore - the systems around you, the natural environment, getting to know ordinary people, examining and classifying materials, describing your lack of stimulation poetically...And that's a good attitude to cultivate. You'll still probably get bored occasionally; it's a part of life.
In fact I would argue that from boredom have come many of my best moments. Where you can't think of anything to do, so working on crazy projects you wouldn't normally consider or exploring round the next corner just to see what's there.
In a way, i'm thankful for boredom
