An End-of-Year Exhortation to Our Students: Rediscover the Gift of Boredom

As another school year comes to a close, I urge you to step into the summer not merely with excitement, but with a sense of leisure—a word too often misunderstood in our age. True leisure is not idleness or entertainment; it is, as Josef Pieper writes, “a form of silence, of that silence which is the prerequisite of the apprehension of reality.”

 

Let your summer be gloriously unstructured. Allow yourself to be bored.

 

By boredom, I don’t mean restlessness or the itch to grab a device. I mean that rare and fertile stillness in which the soul is left to its own musings, freed from the tyranny of constant stimulation. This kind of boredom can be a gift: a clearing in the noise where imagination reawakens, where thought deepens, and where joy in simple things can return.

 

Pieper reminds us that “leisure is a condition of the soul.” It is not a break from learning, but rather its most authentic environment. It is in moments of unhurried quiet that we come to see, to wonder, and to understand—not by force, but by contemplation. And yet, the rhythm of our digital age fights against this. Online life shortens the space between stimulus and response until there’s no room left for interiority. But real learning, and real living, require precisely that room.

 

So this summer, resist the pressure to be endlessly entertained or scheduled. Don’t fill every pause. Let yourself daydream. Read slowly. Take long walks. Build something with your hands. Watch the light shift across the floor. Lie in the grass and stare at the clouds.

 

And remember: the best thoughts do not come in the rush, but in the quiet. May your summer be full of that quiet—and the beauty, insight, and joy that only leisure can bring.