It’s a wonderful spot, and it’s Jake’s favorite place to be — this beautiful little creek that gurgles down the mountain, tumbling into a crystal clear pool. The gentle current on the opposite bank is moving the big elephant-ear leaves that touch the water’s edge. A bird lands nearby. Jake thinks it’s probably a hermit thrush because it has a reddish tail.
And what is Jake doing in this idyllic place?
Absolutely nothing. And he’s loving every moment of it.
“Man, this is the life.”
You have to hand it to Jake; he knows how to handle stress. And he has plenty of it between his chaotic home life and his meaningless school existence where his only view of the outdoors is the concrete outside the little vertical window next to the classroom door. At least he doesn’t get yelled at there.
A similar creek cascades down a similar mountain, singing its own special song. And there sits Doug, hating it all.
“Why’d Dad have to drag us on this dumb vacation, anyway? My computer is a hundred miles away and my cellphone won’t even work here. A whole freaking week of this, and there’s nothing to do.”
Far too many kids have filled their lives with so many stimulating experiences, each on top of the other, that there’s not much space in between for doing nothing. And when those spaces come along, kids like Doug are bored. Kids tend to define life as a series of stimulating adventures. On some level, Doug already knows something is missing from his life. Even when he gets home, he’ll be returning to the same old games with the same old equipment. He’ll have to spend some money to keep up with his passion for games, and he doesn’t have it. He also realizes that because he isolates himself in his room, a lot of his friends have dropped away. He’s not having as much fun as he used to. And then, when he tires of his games, there’s the boredom again. It’s just that sitting beside this silly creek, there’s even more of it.
Most kids hate boredom. They hate to have nothing going on. It’s not helpful to blame technology, but rather kids’ dependence upon it. Just as there’s nothing wrong with television, computers and Minecraft, there’s nothing wrong with boredom. In fact, although it’s ironic to contemplate, a lot of kids need more boredom.
Great plans and ideas, inspiration and solutions to problems don’t come easily to us in the middle of a computer game or when we’re sweating it out on the basketball court. They come at times of solitude — and, yes, dumb vacations where we can empty our minds and let the ideas surface.
Kids already have a lot of knowledge stored within them — the facts they need to come up with new ideas, the answers to many problems. This is why creeks work so well — or deep woods, or deserts, if you will. Everything they need is there, waiting to be used. If kids are going to be nudged off their problem and into their solution, it will happen when they’re doing nothing.
Although Jake has a different spin on solitude and is using his it for another purpose, he, too, is in a good position to let some ideas surface which may brighten his life, because for Jake, this mountain paradise is a very small part of his day-to-day existence. He needs more than this, and it may well come to him beside his creek. Too much of nothing is as harmful as too little. Everything in moderation.
And all this is the reason we mustn’t beat ourselves up because we haven’t planned action-packed days for our kids. Don’t worry about it. Boredom will set in sooner or later and they may find their way out of their trap. One of the greatest gifts we can provide is a creek.
Robin C. Harris, an 18-year resident of Lake County, is the author of “Journeys out of Darkness, Adventures in Foster Care.” A retired educator, he is a substitute teacher for Lake County schools and has recently completed two works of fiction for children and teens. He is available for tutoring in first through eighth grades. Harris can be contacted at harris.tke@att.net.
