Page 22 - Seniorstoday July 2024 Issue

Life Lessons
How Not to be Boring
at 60, 70…
How can we break free from the monotony and rediscover the excitement of
life, asks Vandana Kanoria
I was teetering on a perilous edge staring
down at the abyss.
Looking at the scary, yawning depths of
a life being boring and becoming bored.
What do you do when your life has
become so routine that it has run out of
stories?
When one of the grandkids told me he
had heard the nostalgia laden story of
my childhood escapades a hundred times
and could I please tell him a new story, I
realised I was turning into something I
promised I would never be: boring.
Why do we become a little dull as we
grow older? Is it the preoccupation with
the mundane? An unwillingness to try
something new, something never done
before? Or, as in my case, exchanging
comfort for adventure? “We try to
make every good experience repeatable,
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and then run away from the resulting
boredom”.
At a certain point in our existence
life becomes routine and predictable.
Responsibilities and demands of adult
life often make us prioritise stability
over adventure: and as we age, major
responsibilities taken care of, we settle
into a life which is easy like a cosy
comfortable armchair padded with
everything familiar and we repose in it
loath to get up.
Yet the sameness becomes dull, and the
fount of exciting stories dries up. We
become indifferent to the unfamiliar,
unwilling to explore its many pathways.
Furthermore, modern society offers us a
remarkably homogeneous life experience.
We are taught that if we want to get on,
we must streamline ourselves by chipping