Boring Journey Quotes

To journey for the sake of saving our own lives is little by little to cease to live in any sense that really matters, even to ourselves, because it is only by journeying for the world's sake - even when the world bores and sickens and scares you half to death - that little by little we start to come alive.

We who bore the mark might well be considered by the rest of the world as strange, even as insane and dangerous. We had awoken, or were awakening, and we were striving for an ever perfect state of wakefulness, whereas the ambition and quest for happiness of the others consisted of linking their opinions, ideals, and duties, their life and happiness, ever more closely with those of the herd. They, too, strove; they, too showed signs of strength and greatness. But as we saw it, whereas we marked men represented Nature's determination to create something new, individual, and forward-looking, the others lived in the determination to stay the same. For them mankind--which they loved as much as we did--was a fully formed entity that had to be preserved and protected. For us mankind was a distant future toward which we were all journeying, whose aspect no one knew, whose laws weren't written down anywhere.

If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.

Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time. To journey is to be born and die each minute...All the elements of life are in constant flight from us, with darkness and clarity intermingled, the vision and the eclipse; we look and hasten, reaching out our hands to clutch; every happening is a bend in the road...and suddenly we have grown old. We have a sense of shock and gathering darkness; ahead is a black doorway; the life that bore us is a flagging horse, and a veiled stranger is waiting in the shadows to unharness us.

It's 4am again and I'm just getting started. People are boring and I want to burn with excitement or anger and bleed, bleed through my words. I want to get all fucked up and write real and raw and ugly and beautifully. I bet you're sleeping safe and calm, and you can stay there, it's safer there, and you wouldn't stand one night on this journey my mind wanders off to every night you close your eyes. I'll stay here one day and I will never come down. I promise I can fly before I hit the ground. It doesn't even hurt anymore. I swear, it doesn't hurt.

We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about impenetrable, boring people. It makes us look bad: the duller the interviewee, the duller the prose. If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.

He set his feet. As Billy Martin scrambled away, the big Russian bore in, eyes glittering, and lips pulled back.

Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination. Speak again the ancient oaths and return to men the Shards they once bore.

And Edward was surprised to discover that he was listening. Before, when Abilene had talked to him, everything had seemed so boring, so pointless. But now, the stories Nellie told struck him as the most important thing in the world and he listened as if his life depended on what she said." (page 69)

With nothing meaningful in life, nothing is interesting. Enter boredom. A bored man even longs for longing. He has time to fill, but there is nothing compelling to do.

We want our children to become who they are--- and a developed person is, above all, free. But freedom as we define it doesn't mean doing what you want. Freedom means the ability to make choices that are good for you. It is the power to choose to become what you are capable of becoming, to develop your unique potential by making choices that turn possibility into reality. It is the ability to make choices that actualize you. As often as not, maybe more often than not, this kind of freedom means doing what you do not want, doing what is uncomfortable or tiring or boring or annoying.

Talk away. If you bore us, we have books." With this invitation Rickie began to relate his history. The reader who has no book will be obliged to listen to it.

Your life have to be filled with interesting tales that it should not bore your grandchildren, when you tell them someday.

I really dislike the sort of people who aren't like other people. It's true other people are so boring. But so are the ones who aren't like them.

If the regular length of a shot is increased, one becomes bored, but if you keep on making it longer, a new quality emerges, a special intensity of attention.' At first there can be a friction between our expectations of time and Tarkovsky-time and this friction is increasing in the twenty-first century as we move further and further away from Tarkovsky-time towards moron-time in which nothing can last—and no one can concentrate on anything—for longer than about two seconds.

If you have carefully examined hundred people you met in your life journey, it means that you have read hundred different books! Every person you know is a book; world is full of walking books; some are boring, some are marvellous, some are weak, some are powerful, but they are all useful because they all carry different experiences of different paths!

Merin smiled. "I fought in battle and your mother bore two children. Of the two of us, I think she was the courageous one.

Old friend, there are people—young and old—that I like, and people that I do not like. The former are always in short supply. I am turned off by humorless fanaticism, whether it's revolutionary mumbo-jumbo by a young one, or loud lessons from scripture by and old one. We are all comical, touching, slapstick animals, walking on our hind legs, trying to make it a noble journey from womb to tomb, and the people who can't see it all that way bore hell out of me.

After conscientiously tasting fritters every day for a month Lola had put on two pounds! Her little belt bore witness to the disaster, she found herself obliged to move on to the next notch. She burst into tears.

We underestimate the power of choice, our power to suddenly wake up one day bored of our own bullshit and decide to do things differently.

After ten whole minutes of painful silence, I finally raised my hand and told Mr. O'Hara I loved Miranda Blythe's romance novels, and I decided I liked him immediately when he didn't laugh or reassure me that we'd be reading real books. Like Mrs. Andrews had last year. He did say, 'I'm afraid Ms. Blythe is not on the curriculum this semester. We'll be starting your education with the epic poets—boring, I know, but necessary building blocks. However, an extra-credit book report is always welcome, and you're free to choose whatever topic you like.' Then Mr. O'Hara added, 'I think Ms. Blythe's works would be a particularly interesting topic for a report. In fact, if you want an example of the archetypal hero journey—' 'Wait, wait, wait.' Fred raised his hand. 'You read romance novels?' 'My dear boy,' Mr. O'Hara replied, 'I read everything.

Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for pleasure, which is innocent, but not a few read from habit, and I suppose that is neither innocent nor praiseworthy. Of that lamentable company am I. Conversation after a time bores me, games tire me, and my own thoughts, which we are told are the unfailing resource of a sensible man, have a tendency to run dry. Then I fly to my book as the opium-seeker to his pipe. I would sooner read the catalogue of the Army and Navy stores or Bradshaw's Guide than nothing at all, and indeed I have spent many delightful hours over both these works. At one time I never went out without a second-hand bookseller's list in my pocket. I know no reading more fruity. Of course to read in this way is as reprehensible as doping, and I never cease to wonder at the impertinence of great readers who, because they are such, look down on the illiterate. From the standpoint of what eternity is it better to have read a thousand books than to have ploughed a million furrows? Let us admit that reading with us is just a drug that we cannot do without — who of this band does not know the restlessness that attacks him when he has been severed from reading too long, the apprehension and irritability, and the sigh of relief which the sight of a printed page extracts from him? — and so let us be no more vainglorious than the poor slaves of the hypodermic needle or the pint-pot. And like the dope-fiend who cannot move from place to place without taking with him a plentiful supply of his deadly balm I never venture far without a sufficiency of reading matter. Books are so necessary to me that when in a railway train I have become aware that fellow-travellers have come away without a single one I have been seized with a veritable dismay. But when I am starting on a long journey the problem is formidable.

At this slower pace the journey took a couple of days, and I fought off a few minor threats along the way --griffins, carnivorous plants, giant serpents, hostile centaurs, that sort of thing, purely routine --and I was beginning to get bored when at last the dusky towers of Castle Roogna hove into view.

As I glanced at the phraseology of the research report, dull and unfathomable to outsiders like me, I thought that if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable. Don’t act like Blofeld—monocled and ostentatious. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about impenetrable, boring people. It makes us look bad: the duller the interviewee, the duller the prose. If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.

I fear that I bore you with these details, but I have to let you see my little difficulties, if you are to understand the situation.

It may very well be that the frotteurist is a helpless victim in the clutches of his obsession, but it’s equally possible that he’s simply a bored creep looking for a cheap thrill.

Trouble with a long journey like this,' continued the Captain, 'is that you end up just talking to yourself a lot, which gets terribly boring because half the time you know what you’re going to say next.

There is something beautiful about shyness, even though in our culture shyness is not considered a virtue. On the contrary, we are encouraged to be direct, look people straight in the eyes, tell them what is on our minds, and share our stories without a blush. But this unflinching soul-baring, confessional attitude quickly becomes boring. It is like trees without shadows. Shy people have long shadows, where they keep much of their beauty hidden from intruders’ eyes. Shy people remind us of the mystery of life that cannot be simply explained or expressed. They invite us to reverent and respectful friendships and to a wordless being together in love.

The more beautiful world my heart knows is possible is a world with a lot more pleasure: a lot more touch, a lot more lovemaking, a lot more hugging, a lot more deep gazing into each other’s eyes, a lot more fresh-ground tortillas and just-harvested tomatoes still warm from the sun, a lot more singing, a lot more dancing, a lot more timelessness, a lot more beauty in the built environment, a lot more pristine views, a lot more water fresh from the spring. Have you ever tasted real water, springing from the earth after a twenty-year journey through the mountain? None of these pleasures is very far away. None requires any new inventions, nor the subservience of the many to the few. Yet our society is destitute of them all. Our wealth, so-called, is a veil for our poverty, a substitute for what is missing. Because it cannot meet most of our true needs, it is an addictive substitute. No amount can ever be enough. Many of us already see through the superficial substitute pleasures we are offered. They are boring to us, or even revolting. We needn’t sacrifice pleasure to reject them. We need only sacrifice the habit, deeply ingrained, of choosing a lesser pleasure over a greater. Where does this habit come from? It is an essential strand of the world of separation, because most of the tasks that we must do to keep the world-devouring machine operating do not feel very good at all. To keep doing them, we must be trained to deny pleasure.

I turned myself into an artist because then my life would be about creating meaning out of ugliness and that would be my life, and it was noble. It was the beginning of a journey, the creating of the world every single day and I was not bored. I was ecstasy and creation and nothingness turned into melodies and I was dancing with the spirits.

Who wasn’t either bored or troubled with their own story and only too happy to leap into someone else’s? It further confirmed her motto: Reality sucks. Make-believe rocks.

Without travels, our existence, our memories, our literature, our dreams, our everything would be very poor, very boring, very limited!

Drinking the same wines all the time is really boring.

Even if you believe the Genesis record of creation you’ll see that God did not create a black and white world of male and female. Creation is not black and white, it is amazingly diverse, like a rainbow, including sexualities and a variety of non-heterosexual expressions of behaviour, affection and partnering occurring in most species, including humans. The ability to reproduce is only a small part of the creation. Before God created male and female he made an even more important statement; ‘it is not good for mankind to be alone’. This is fundamental to all heterosexual and same-sex relationships. Lasting relationships are based on love, trust and commitment, not sex or reproduction. So stop with the ‘God created Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve’ quote already. It’s boring and an insult to the creator of this incredible universe.

I ask you to come down to earth," said the Baron in a calm, rather faint voice, "and to take up the duties of your station!" "I have no intention of obeying you, my Lord Father," said Cosimo. "I am very sorry." They were ill at ease, both of them, bored. Each knew what the other would say. "And what about your studies? Your devotions as a Christian?" said the father. "Do you intend to grown up like an American Savage?" Cosimo was silent. These were thoughts he had not yet put to himself and had no wish to. Then he exclaimed: "Just because I'm a few yards higher up, does it mean that good teaching can't reach me?" This was an able reply too, though it diminished, in a way, the range of his gesture; a sign of weakness. His father realized this and became more pressing. "Rebellion cannot be measured by yards," said he. "Even when a journey seems no distance at all, it can have no return." Now was the moment for my brother to produce some other noble reply, perhaps a Latin maxim, but at that instant none came into his head, though he knew so many by heart. Instead he suddenly got bored with all this solemnity, and shouted: "But from the trees I can piss farther," a phrase without much meaning, but which cut the discussion short. As though they had heard the phrase, a shout went up from the ragamuffins around Porta Capperi. The Baron of Rondo's horse shied, the Baron pulled the reins and wrapped himself more tightly in his cloak, ready to leave. Then he turned, drew an arm out of his cloak, pointed to the sky, which had suddenly become overcast with black clouds, and exclaimed: "Be careful, son, there's Someone who can piss on us all!"...

I was boring myself. That’s the worst part of a bad date. It makes you feel like a toad, and you keep telling yourself, “I know I’m more fun than this, and I know that when I came into this café I wasn’t in despair about the human condition.

If the regular length of a shot is increased, one becomes bored, but if you keep on making it longer, it piques your interest, and if you make it even longer, a new quality emerges, a special intensity of attention.’ This is Tarkovsky’s aesthetic in a nutshell.

The many contradictions in our lives – such as being home while feeling homeless, being busy while feeling bored, being popular while feeling lonely, being believers while feeling many doubts – can frustrate, irritate, and even discourage us. They make us feel that we are never fully present. Every door that opens for us makes us see how many more doors are closed. But there is another response. These same contradictions can bring us into touch with a deeper longing, for the fulfillment of a desire that lives beneath all desires and that only God can satisfy. Contradictions, thus understood, create the friction that can help us move toward God.

When shame is met with compassion and not received as confirmation of our guilt, we can begin to see how slant a lens it has had us looking through. That awareness lets us step back far enough to see that if we can let it go, we will see ourselves as clean where we once thought we were dirty. We will remember our innocence. We will see how our shame supported a system in which the perpetrators were protected and we bore the brunt of their offense — first in its actuality, then again in carrying their shame for it. If the method we chose to try to beat out shame was perfectionism, we can relax now, shake the burden off our shoulders, and give ourselves a chance to loosen up and make some errors. Hallelujah! Our freedom will not come from tireless effort and getting it all exactly right.

They are dreary word puzzles I’m always too bored and annoyed to solve. Each paragraph is a half smile, half frown, way up its own asshole. Also, they beg questions like: when on her perilous, pirouetting journey from Interlochen to Barnard was she ever in a trailer?

The learning principle is to plunge into the detailed mystery of the micro in order to understand what makes the macro tick. Our obstacle is that we live in an attention-deficit culture. We are bombarded with more and more information on television, radio, cell phones, video games, the Internet. The constant supply of stimulus has the potential to turn us into addicts, always hungering for something new and prefabricated to keep us entertained. When nothing exciting is going on, we might get bored, distracted, separated from the moment. So we look for new entertainment, surf channels, flip through magazines. If caught in these rhythms, we are like tiny current-bound surface fish, floating along a two-dimensional world without any sense for the gorgeous abyss below. When these societally induced tendencies translate into the learning process, they have devastating effect.

In my own shire, if I was sad Homely comforters I had: The earth, because my heart was sore, Sorrowed for the son she bore; And standing hills, long to remain, Shared their short-lived comrade's pain. And bound for the same bourn as I, On every road I wandered by, Trod beside me, close and dear, The beautiful and death-struck year: Whether in the woodland brown I heard the beechnut rustle down, And saw the purple crocus pale Flower about the autumn dale; Or littering far the fields of May Lady-smocks a-bleaching lay, And like a skylit water stood The bluebells in the azured wood. Yonder, lightening other loads, The season range the country roads, But here in London streets I ken No such helpmates, only men; And these are not in plight to bear, If they would, another's care. They have enough as 'tis: I see In many an eye that measures me The mortal sickness of a mind Too unhappy to be kind. Undone with misery, all they can Is to hate their fellow man; And till they drop they needs must still Look at you and wish you ill.

as i discovered, the path to sobriety is a precarious, complex journey. you obviously want to purge yourself of something that has been so destructive and has had such a grip on you. but in the deep recesses of your mind, you wonder if you will mourn the loss of this old friend that has been by your side for years. i know this sounds sick, but you actually find yourself wondering if your life is going to become quite boring without this crutch. of course, the yearning for true health far outweighs everything else. you know things are going to be better for you, for your loved ones, and for everyone you encounter. you will no longer have to hide things and live a lie. yes, that initial high of drugs and booze can be very, very attractive, but it's not worth the wrecked and trashed feeling you have the next morning. nor is it worth the cumulative toll it exacts from you.

Every single man is boring in a long-time relationship. But it's OK because the journey by man is charm-full.

At ninety-eight point six everything is boring. Yet

Life is a long boring drive on an empty road punctuated by special moments that make the journey worth taking.

Imaginary evil is romantic, varied; real evil is dreary, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.

We scoffed at the kids who weren't like us, the ones who already talked about careers, or bliddy mortgages and pensions. Kids wanting to be old before they were young. Kids wanting to be dead before they'd lived. They were digging their own graves, building the walls of their own damn jails. Us, we hung to our youth. We were footloose, fancy free. We said we'd never grow boring and old. We plundered charity shops for vintage clothes. We bought battered Levis and gorgeous faded velvet stuff from Attica in High Bridge. We wore coloured boots, hemp scarves from Gaia. We read Baudelaire and Byron. We read our poems to each other. We wrote songs and posted them on YouTube. We formed bands. We talked of the amazing journeys we'd take together once school was done. Sometimes we paired off, made couples that lasted for a little while, but the group was us. We hung together. We could say anything to each other. We loved each other.

In Antartica, The Wright and half a dozen other valleys in the Central Transantarctic Mountains are collectively referred to as the dry valleys. It has not rained here in two million years. No animal abides, no plant grows. A persistent, sometimes ferocious wind has stripped the country to stone and gravel, to streamers of sand. The huge valleys stand stark as empty fjords. You look in vain for any conventional sign of human history- the vestige of a protective wall, a bit of charcoal, a discarded arrowhead. Nothing. There is no history, until you bore into the layers of rock or until the balls of your fingertips run the rim of a partially exposed fossil. At the height of the austral summer, in December, you smell nothing but the sunbeaten stone. In a silence dense as water, your eye picks up no movement but the sloughing of sand, seeking its angle of repose. On the flight in from New Zealand it had occurred to me, from what I had read and heard, that Antarctica retained Earth’s primitive link, however tenuous, with space, with the void that stretched out to Jupiter and Uranus. At the seabird rookeries of the Canadian Arctic or on the grasslands of the Serengeti, you can feel the vitality of the original creation; in the dry valleys you sense sharply what came before. The Archeozoic is like fresh spoor here.

When journalist Blaine Harden boarded a tug to make the journey in the mid-1990s, his captain offered a sober prediction: “By the time you get to Portland, you are going to be bored shitless.

Consider the great Samuel Clemens. Huckleberry Finn is one of the few books that all American children are mandated to read: Jonathan Arac, in his brilliant new study of the teaching of Huck, is quite right to term it 'hyper-canonical.' And Twain is a figure in American history as well as in American letters. The only objectors to his presence in the schoolroom are mediocre or fanatical racial nationalists or 'inclusivists,' like Julius Lester or the Chicago-based Dr John Wallace, who object to Twain's use—in or out of 'context'—of the expression 'nigger.' An empty and formal 'debate' on this has dragged on for decades and flares up every now and again to bore us. But what if Twain were taught as a whole? He served briefly as a Confederate soldier, and wrote a hilarious and melancholy account, The Private History of a Campaign That Failed. He went on to make a fortune by publishing the memoirs of Ulysses Grant. He composed a caustic and brilliant report on the treatment of the Congolese by King Leopold of the Belgians. With William Dean Howells he led the Anti-Imperialist League, to oppose McKinley's and Roosevelt's pious and sanguinary war in the Philippines. Some of the pamphlets he wrote for the league can be set alongside those of Swift and Defoe for their sheer polemical artistry. In 1900 he had a public exchange with Winston Churchill in New York City, in which he attacked American support for the British war in South Africa and British support for the American war in Cuba. Does this count as history? Just try and find any reference to it, not just in textbooks but in more general histories and biographies. The Anti-Imperialist League has gone down the Orwellian memory hole, taking with it a great swirl of truly American passion and intellect, and the grand figure of Twain has become reduced—in part because he upended the vials of ridicule over the national tendency to religious and spiritual quackery, where he discerned what Tocqueville had missed and far anticipated Mencken—to that of a drawling, avuncular fabulist.

Time has become a melding of minutes and months and the feeling of seasons. […] Leon says it is the Bhutan Time Warp and I know what he means. Time does not hurl itself forward at breakneck speed here. Change happens very slowly. A grandmother and her granddaughter wear the same kind of clothes, they do the same work, they know the same songs. The granddaughter does not find her grandmother an embarrassing, boring relic.

Even houses change, Reynie had thought, and it had caused an odd flutter in his stomach. Weren't houses supposed to represent stability? Sure, the Society had changed a lot of things about Mr. Benedict's house on purpose, but some things, Reynie realized, they had changed simply by being there. A thousand footsteps on that particular board, and now it creaked. Every member of the Society, too, bore a thousand hidden footsteps: effects of a different kind, many impossible to have predicted.

Sir Pom-pom gave a scornful grunt. ‘As for me, I am bored with this constant trudging through the dust! The roads never end; they simply join into another road, so that a wanderer never comes to his journey’s end.’ ‘That is the nature of the vagabond.

On a long journey to Glen-Stone Isailed into its shade there before me she proudly shone my decision was already made. A lass who bore the light of the town her fur of ivory thread how she danced is stuck in my crown and back to this glen my boat led. Twenty some seasons have since passed since her eyes and mine both met through lands unnamed and wildly vast my blade slaying every threat Wolf, hawk, fox, and snake can't stand in my way my body is weak and it may break, but not today. Living in blackness wrought with fright my steel shattered facing the foes dusks and dawns darker than night my fallen companions in rows Life spilled past me staining the ground mylimbs growing ever so cold above villians let out a cackiling sound telling me i'd never grow old One dance and one mouse played in my mind calling me back from the doom the courage to carry on i did find to raise me out of my tomb Wolf, hawk, fox, and snake can't stand in my way my body is weak and it may break though not today Battered and bruised i stood to my paws raised what little i owned predators growled caring not for my cause of the mouse that shone light off Glen-stone Wolf, hawk, fox, and snake can't tand in my way my body is weak and it may break though not today. -The Ballad Of The Ivory Lass

Life is like a train going in circles, the train is comfortable - it has nice scenery, it provides warmth and food & for most a loving atmosphere. Most of the people stay on the train there entire lives, maybe every now and again they may peep out the door, some might even get off only to quickly realise they want back on. Then you have the rare ones who I aspire to be, those who are bored of the train - to them - the thought of living without it, is risky but the reward of tasting life outside of doors and walls excite them enough to try.

...the process of truly learning is laborious, monotonous, and at times down right bitter and boring. Therefore, obtaining a truly higher education will require of you a determined mind and a will to stick and stay. In short, it will take discipline. But in the end, it will be worth it all.

North Americans also believe they have the eternal right to be entertained, and if any of their rights are denied, they feel frustrated. The rest of the world, in contrast, expects that on the whole, life is hard, and boring, so they celebrate sparks of joy and diversion, however modest, when they occur.

— I don’t know why people aren’t more curious, and why curiosity isn’t considered a more important leadership trait. A journalist once asked me if I was ever bored as a kid. I only had to think about it for a second: I never was, not even for a minute, because I was so curious. Every day I’d wake up excited by all the new things there were to learn about.

We want to sell ourselves the idea of travel as shown in airline commercials, the one in which each journey is filled with bright and vibrant stimuli and an almost mandatory sense of discovery: Travel is supposed to mean new foods, new sounds, and new friends. But much of the time, travel and the places we find ourselves as we travel are remarkably boring.

Girls aside, the other thing I found in the last few years of being at school, was a quiet, but strong Christian faith – and this touched me profoundly, setting up a relationship or faith that has followed me ever since. I am so grateful for this. It has provided me with a real anchor to my life and has been the secret strength to so many great adventures since. But it came to me very simply one day at school, aged only sixteen. As a young kid, I had always found that a faith in God was so natural. It was a simple comfort to me: unquestioning and personal. But once I went to school and was forced to sit through somewhere in the region of nine hundred dry, Latin-liturgical, chapel services, listening to stereotypical churchy people droning on, I just thought that I had got the whole faith deal wrong. Maybe God wasn’t intimate and personal but was much more like chapel was … tedious, judgemental, boring and irrelevant. The irony was that if chapel was all of those things, a real faith is the opposite. But somehow, and without much thought, I had thrown the beautiful out with the boring. If church stinks, then faith must do, too. The precious, natural, instinctive faith I had known when I was younger was tossed out with this newly found delusion that because I was growing up, it was time to ‘believe’ like a grown-up. I mean, what does a child know about faith? It took a low point at school, when my godfather, Stephen, died, to shake me into searching a bit harder to re-find this faith I had once known. Life is like that. Sometimes it takes a jolt to make us sit and remember who and what we are really about. Stephen had been my father’s best friend in the world. And he was like a second father to me. He came on all our family holidays, and spent almost every weekend down with us in the Isle of Wight in the summer, sailing with Dad and me. He died very suddenly and without warning, of a heart attack in Johannesburg. I was devastated. I remember sitting up a tree one night at school on my own, and praying the simplest, most heartfelt prayer of my life. ‘Please, God, comfort me.’ Blow me down … He did. My journey ever since has been trying to make sure I don’t let life or vicars or church over-complicate that simple faith I had found. And the more of the Christian faith I discover, the more I realize that, at heart, it is simple. (What a relief it has been in later life to find that there are some great church communities out there, with honest, loving friendships that help me with all of this stuff.) To me, my Christian faith is all about being held, comforted, forgiven, strengthened and loved – yet somehow that message gets lost on most of us, and we tend only to remember the religious nutters or the God of endless school assemblies. This is no one’s fault, it is just life. Our job is to stay open and gentle, so we can hear the knocking on the door of our heart when it comes. The irony is that I never meet anyone who doesn’t want to be loved or held or forgiven. Yet I meet a lot of folk who hate religion. And I so sympathize. But so did Jesus. In fact, He didn’t just sympathize, He went much further. It seems more like this Jesus came to destroy religion and to bring life. This really is the heart of what I found as a young teenager: Christ comes to make us free, to bring us life in all its fullness. He is there to forgive us where we have messed up (and who hasn’t), and to be the backbone in our being. Faith in Christ has been the great empowering presence in my life, helping me walk strong when so often I feel so weak. It is no wonder I felt I had stumbled on something remarkable that night up that tree. I had found a calling for my life.

The Prologue When the autumn breeze blows and stirs up a sense of adventure, I find myself wishing that I could embark on a grand quest full of danger, a journey to an unknown world. A quest of epic proportions that ends in a glorious blaze of heroics before I return home to resume the life that I had left behind for a time. This is only the wishful musings of a normal girl bored with the way things are. Then again, it might not be. My story begins much like any other, but don’t be deceived! This story is nothing like any other you have ever read—or heard, as the case may be. At least, I don’t think it is. But who am I to say such a thing? You must read it and decide for yourself. So. Here it is. I hope you enjoy the ride—or the read, rather.

Imagine that a tribe of ignorant natives find a motor-car, and decide that it makes an ideal storage room for food. So when they set out on a journey, they load it with food, attach ropes to it, and pull it through the jungle as if it was a cart. One of them fiddling about inside it, discovers the hand brake and releases it. Immediately, they find the car much easier to pull. They congratulate the discoverer, tell him he is a genius, and convince themselves that they now know the purpose and use of the car. This is how I feel with my body. Occasionally, as I am dragging it along, it accidentally gets into gear; there is a roar, and the engine starts for a moment. Then, just as quickly, it cuts out. But I know that this body is not merely designed for this boring, irritating, two-dimensional life that so easily becomes a burden to me.

As I glanced at the phraseology of the research report, dull and unfathomable to outsiders like me, I thought that if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable. Don't act like Blofeld--monocled and ostentatious. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about boring, impenetrable people. ...If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.

I was standing alone, at bank of a river Singing a song of a dishearten seraph Wind blows throw me, wild and cold Freezing my eyes to capture the knock I was staring at a glimpse straight to my sight Ignoring the glamour and beauty of life I saw someone in the blurred flight Circling over me to focus the light My mind become brighter and so am I Oh! He was there for so long I find I was never as solo as my night I have a perfect one to be on my side I was once weak and disappointed by my journey I was angry and mad on my unfaithful company I tried hard to be stronger and tougher than I mean And now I am determined and full of virtuous deeds I was bored of hectic normal life of mine And couldn’t find anyone to guide on my line I alone discovered what I meant to be My talents, my path and my desired needs I am ready to face the world that I've known To uncover those skills I learned on my own To make a place of acts, not of just words A place of liberty and love to be heard

Over the years I’ve received countless messages from people unsure if they’re ‘really trans’ because of X, Y or Z. Some people think that they’ve found out too late in life, and therefore if they were really trans they’d have known earlier. Others think that because they didn’t have any ‘signs’ or feelings in childhood, then surely they can’t actually be trans. Both are incorrect. This is your life, your identity and your journey. You’ll probably get bored of me saying this: no single identity journey is the same.

The next day—Christmas Eve—Musk called in reinforcements. Ross Nordeen drove from San Francisco. He stopped at the Apple Store in Union Square and spent $2,000 to buy out the entire stock of AirTags so the servers could be tracked on their journey, and then stopped at Home Depot, where he spent $2,500 on wrenches, bolt-cutters, headlamps, and the tools needed to unscrew the seismic bolts. Steve Davis got someone from The Boring Company to procure a semi truck and line up moving vans. Other enlistees arrived from SpaceX.

 I find myself humming as I reach the top of the steps, but then I halt. “Really now, Kearan,” I say. He’s facedown on the ground. Likely passed out in his own vomit, yet again. This can’t continue. I’ll have to think of some fitting punishment for him. I couldn’t care less what he does in his free time, but when he’s on duty, he’d better be ready to perform at his best. Suddenly his whole body jerks upward, and I take a step back in case he’s having some sort of sleeping fit. “Three,” he says on a raspy breath before leaning down to the ground again. Is he sleep talking? He’s been known to do that even with his eyes open. No, wait—“Are you doing push-ups?” I ask. “F-f-four,” he says as he rises again. “Sweet stars, you are. What’s gotten into you?” After five, he lies on the ground and rolls onto his back, breathing heavily. “Just passing the time, is all. We’ve a long journey ahead of us.” Yes, but he usually passes the time with drink. He reaches into one of his pockets. Ah, there he is. But what he pulls out isn’t a flask. It’s a canteen. The kind we use on the ship for storing water. He sits up and takes a few sips. “What’s in that?” He holds the canteen out to me, and I take a sniff. It’s water. “She dumped all of my flasks into the sea while I slept,” Kearan says. “Didn’t realize she cared so much.” He searches across the ship for Sorinda, but she must be belowdecks because he focuses on me once more. “Any more questions, Captain?” His tone sounds bored. “Are we headed in the right direction?” “Course, I’m keeping her steady.” “Good,” I say before moving on quickly. Lest Kearan break into song or sprout wings.

My father sent me away for a time to live in Dundee with a cousin, whose company, he hoped, would improve my solitude. But there is something of a lighthousekeeper in me, and I am not afraid of solitude, nor of nature in her wildness. I found in those days that my happiest times were outside and alone, inventing stories of every kind, and as far from my real circumstances as possible. I became my own ladder and trapdoor to other worlds. I was my own disguise. The sight of a figure, far off, on some journey of his own, was enough to spark my imagination towards a tragedy or a miracle. I was never bored except in the company of others.

I joined a bunch of Bible studies when I started following Jesus. Everyone around me was in at least one, so I thought there must be some rule or eleventh commandment and I had just missed it. We sat in circles, and I assumed we'd either start making friendship bracelets or start talking about Jesus. We ate chips and cookies, and I heard lots of opinions about every social topic, about whether it's okay to watch rated R movies, and about what words meant in Greek and Hebrew. It wasn't long before I started to feel bored with the whole thing. That's when some friends and I started a 'Bible Doing' group. We read what Jesus said and then schemed ways to actually go and do those things. It might sound strange, but think about it: Jesus never said, 'Study Me.' He said, 'Follow Me.' Jesus invited us to find people who don't have food and to get them something to eat. He said to hang out with people in prison. He said if you know someone who doesn’t have a place to stay, help them find one. He was all about doing things for widows and orphans, not becoming informed about them. Following Jesus is way more exciting than studying Him. Do we need to know the Scriptures? You bet. But don't stop there. Our faith can start to get confusing and boring when we exercise it by debating about it.

Back in Russia, where they’re still getting acclimated to the whole capitalism thing, most TV advertising took a straightforward approach to persuasion. Thus, even though I don’t speak Russian, I had no trouble understanding Russian ads. They were all along the lines o: “Oh, no, there’s a stain on the tablecloth! What will Mom do? Thank goodness for this effective detergent!” Not so in Japan, where sophisticated consumers have grown bored with simple persuasion, forcing advertisers to get wildly inventive. Japanese TV ads have at this point evolved into an abstract mishmash of symbols and sounds. Your average thirty-second Japanese commercial is something like: Here’s a man holding a giraffe. Now the giraffe morphs into a rainbow. The rainbow is friends with a talking pencil, and they live together on a spaceship. A few seconds of laughter! A snippet of loud reggae music! Fad out. At least half the time, I have no idea what the product being advertised is or what it does. And yet I very much enjoy the ads. They’re like short-acting hallucinogens.

CUCHULAIN’S FIGHT WITH THE SEA A MAN came slowly from the setting sun, To Emer, raddling raiment in her dun, And said, ‘I am that swineherd whom you bid Go watch the road between the wood and tide, But now I have no need to watch it more.’ Then Emer cast the web upon the floor, And raising arms all raddled with the dye, Parted her lips with a loud sudden cry. That swineherd stared upon her face and said, ‘No man alive, no man among the dead, Has won the gold his cars of battle bring.’ ‘But if your master comes home triumphing Why must you blench and shake from foot to crown?’ Thereon he shook the more and cast him down Upon the web-heaped floor, and cried his word: ‘With him is one sweet-throated like a bird.’ ‘You dare me to my face,’ and thereupon She smote with raddled fist, and where her son Herded the cattle came with stumbling feet, And cried with angry voice, ’It is not meet To idle life away, a common herd.’ ‘I have long waited, mother, for that word: But wherefore now?’ ‘There is a man to die; You have the heaviest arm under the sky.’ ‘Whether under its daylight or its stars My father stands amid his battle-cars.’ ‘But you have grown to be the taller man.’ ‘Yet somewhere under starlight or the sun My father stands.’ ‘Aged, worn out with wars On foot, on horseback or in battle-cars.’ ‘I only ask what way my journey lies, For He who made you bitter made you wise.’ ‘The Red Branch camp in a great company Between wood’s rim and the horses of the sea. Go there, and light a camp-fire at wood’s rim; But tell your name and lineage to him Whose blade compels, and wait till they have found Some feasting man that the same oath has bound.’ Among those feasting men Cuchulain dwelt, And his young sweetheart close beside him knelt, Stared on the mournful wonder of his eyes, Even as Spring upon the ancient skies, And pondered on the glory of his days; And all around the harp-string told his praise, And Conchubar, the Red Branch king of kings, With his own fingers touched the brazen strings. At last Cuchulain spake, ‘Some man has made His evening fire amid the leafy shade. I have often heard him singing to and fro, I have often heard the sweet sound of his bow. Seek out what man he is.’ One went and came. ‘He bade me let all know he gives his name At the sword-point, and waits till we have found Some feasting man that the same oath has bound.’ Cuchulain cried, ‘I am the only man Of all this host so bound from childhood on. After short fighting in the leafy shade, He spake to the young man, ’Is there no maid Who loves you, no white arms to wrap you round, Or do you long for the dim sleepy ground, That you have come and dared me to my face?’ ‘The dooms of men are in God’s hidden place,’ ‘Your head a while seemed like a woman’s head That I loved once.’ Again the fighting sped, But now the war-rage in Cuchulain woke, And through that new blade’s guard the old blade broke, And pierced him. ‘Speak before your breath is done.’ ‘Cuchulain I, mighty Cuchulain’s son.’ ‘I put you from your pain. I can no more.’ While day its burden on to evening bore, With head bowed on his knees Cuchulain stayed; Then Conchubar sent that sweet-throated maid, And she, to win him, his grey hair caressed; In vain her arms, in vain her soft white breast. Then Conchubar, the subtlest of all men, Ranking his Druids round him ten by ten, Spake thus: ‘Cuchulain will dwell there and brood For three days more in dreadful quietude, And then arise, and raving slay us all. Chaunt in his ear delusions magical, That he may fight the horses of the sea.’ The Druids took them to their mystery, And chaunted for three days. Cuchulain stirred, Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard The cars of battle and his own name cried; And fought with the invulnerable tide.

The real life of the East is agony to watch and horror to share. One of the three greatest joys in life is swimming naked in clean tropical sea. We need a root of personal experience from which to grow our understanding. Each new experience plants another root; the smallest root will serve. The lethargy of compounded discomfort and boredom is the trademark of the genuine horror journey. That state of grace which can rightly be called happiness, when body and mind rejoice together. This occurs, as a divine surprise, in travel; this is why I will never finish traveling. Loving is a habit like another and requires something nearby for daily practice. I loved the cat, the cat appeared to love me. As for me, the name Surinam was enough. I had to see a place with a name like that. Stinking with rancid coconut butter, the local Elizabeth Arden skin cream. You define your own horror journey, according to your taste. My definition of what makes a journey wholly or partially horrible is boredom. Add discomfort, fatigue, strain in large amounts to get the purest-quality horror, but the kernel is boredom. Bali- a museum island, boringly exquisite, filled with poor beautiful people being stared at by rich beautiful people. No sight is better calculated to turn anyone off travel than the departure lounge of a big airport.

The best time to write about one’s childhood is in the early thirties, when the contrast between early forced passivity and later freedom is marked; and when one’s energy is in full flood. Later, not only have the juices dried up, and the energy ceased to be abundant, but the retracing of the scene of earliest youth has become a task filled with boredom and dismay. The figures that surrounded one have now turned their full face toward us; we understand them perhaps still partially, but we know them only too well. They have ceased to be background to our own terribly important selves; they have irremediably taken on the look of figures in a tragi-comedy; for we know their end, although they themselves do not yet know it. And now—in the middle-fifties—we have traced and retraced their tragedy so often that, in spire of the understanding we have, it bores and offends us. There is a final antidote we must learn: to love and forgive them. This attitude comes hard and must be reached with anguish. For if one is to deal with people in the past—of one’s past—at all, one must feel neither anger nor bitterness. We are not here to expose each other, like journalists writing gossip, or children blaming others for their own bad behavior. And open confession, for certain temperaments (certainly my own), is not good for the soul, in any direct way. To confess is to ask for pardon; and the whole confusing process brings out too much self-pity and too many small emotions in general. For people like myself to look back is a task. It is like re-entering a trap, or a labyrinth, from which one has only too lately, and too narrowly, escaped.

To walk through life with every step a full measure to our, so called, 'destiny' would be a boring life indeed. Embarked on this straight, direct, unerring journey, complete with no 'mirrors or doors', would surely be no friend. Why is this so hard to understand?

Analyzing the effect a presentation has on you is a fantastic way to learn what works and what doesn’t when it comes to public speaking. If you don’t grab your audience’s attention within the first 30 seconds, your audience will mentally tune out of your presentation. Don’t bore your audience with introductory remarks. Begin with a story. Stories are powerful because people are hardwired to listen to stories. Stories take your audience on a mental journey. Audiences cannot resist a well-told story (even if they try). CHAPTER THREE The Surprising Element That Makes a Story Irresistible What is it that hooks us into certain stories?

A black hole the size of 300 billion stars is gobbling up the M87 galaxy because astronomers gave it a boring name.

Our journey wasn’t easy, though often curious: I bored her with my experience of life, she made me old by waiting from morning to evening, wherever we were, for my enthusiasm . . .

What I really enjoyed was that, although we (musicians) have all had similar journeys, you found a literary way of making yours so engaging and impossible to put down, making us able to relate to your experience and feel as if we were right there with you, What could have been mundane and boring in anyone else's hand becomes a timeless 'coming of age' narrative on a par with many classics....apart from all of the musical stuff, YOU ARE A TERRIFIC WRITER!" Guillermo Figueroa, violinist/conductor

The only difference between people who are truly abundant and thriving spiritually, emotionally, romantically, financially, and professionally and those who are stuck, stagnated, and feeling they are missing out and living the same boring, depressed, and small life is that those who are truly abundant know their Purposes and are living them daily.

We are on the hero's journey when we submit to the deep processes of life and allow them to affect us and bore their necessities into us. We are the hero when we take on the challenges and go through our initiations and transformations, enduring loss and gain, feeling happy and sad, making progress and falling back. The hero is engaged in life The hero is not the one who displays force and muscle without deep insight or the courage to be. The hero may not look heroic from the outside but may go through powerful developments in a quiet way. The difference is that the real hero engages life and reflects on it. She becomes more and more what he or she is destined to be.

I thought I was just catching up to everyone else, but it turned out I overshot the mark and had begun to launch myself on a journey that would take me to the very edge of the human condition where I would be more lonely, broke and bored than I had ever been in my life.

Oh Finn, thought Maia, I know I should be glad you’re free and happy, and I am glad. Only I really don’t know what to do here anymore. But Finn wasn’t happy. Both he and the boat seemed somehow sluggish, and he couldn’t quite get rid of the knot in his stomach. He had moored by a huge dyewood tree. The water flowed quietly in a deep channel; nowhere better could be found. So why? He’d had his supper of beans and roasted maize; the deck was piled with chopped wood; the dog had gone ashore to find his own supper and came back with a smug expression and blood on his jaws. Everything was fine. A group of howler monkeys came swinging through the trees, making their evening racket, half screech, half laughter, and stopped when they saw the Arabella. Perhaps I should have gone to Westwood, thought Finn. “They’d have knocked all this rubbish out of me. Foreseeing disasters…” What did he think could happen to Maia in the Carters’ bungalow? The whole point about the Carters’ bungalow was that nothing happened in it. It was the most boring house in the world--and the Indians had promised to look after her. “No harm will come to your friend,” Furo had said. So why did the unease get worse all the time? He remembered saying good-bye to Maia. She had come out of the house in her dressing gown; she ran so lightly, but when he’d hugged her she felt wonderfully solid. No, Maia would be all right. “I’m not going back,” said Finn aloud. And in the trees, the monkeys threw back their heads and roared.

I’m looking for someone who I can have fun with on the journey to figure all that stuff out. A travel companion. Not a tour guide who already knows all the answers. How boring would that be? I want the man, not the résumé.

Only those intrepid souls who are prepared to join Yarnspinner on his perilous journey should read this book. We wish the rest of you a long, safe, unutterably dull and boring life!

Both of these parenting styles have their advantages, Lareau found (although I should note that she did not look at families that used corporal punishment as severe as in my family after my parents split). The middle-class way was not, as some might expect, superior all around. The working-class children were often happier and better behaved. They were much closer to their extended families and were full of energy. They mostly did as they were told. They knew how to entertain themselves and were rarely bored. They were more adept at relationships. The middle-class youth, however, were much more prepared for school and far better situated to deal with adult authorities. They could speak up for themselves and use well-crafted arguments to come to conclusions more skillfully. This elaborated way of thinking also helped them better make plans that required multiple steps. Essentially, they were more prepared for success in the American mainstream than the working-class children were. And this was true regardless of whether they were black or white. Through this parenting style, middle-class children were being trained to lead, whether intentionally or not. Meanwhile, the poor and working class were being trained for life on the bottom. Middle-class children were constantly being taught explicitly to advocate for themselves with authorities, while the lower classes were taught to submit without question. Or, if they were going to resist, the poor learned by experience to do so covertly, not openly.

Holy Out – or Joe Smith – told me that he enjoyed working for a living. “It gives your days a pattern,” he said, “and without pattern, life is a bore." I thought this was an interesting antithesis to the notion held by many acidheads that in the perfect society of the future, all work would be done by machines and people would be free to devote themselves to love, head games and art. Addicts, and even ex-addicts, tend to regard life as a problem either to be evaded (by down drugs) or solved by effort of will; but psychedelic people see it as a sport to be enhanced (by up drugs) or observed in meditative tranquility.

One day I realized it didn’t matter if I white-washed my vocabulary, scrutinized all my actions, and changed the way I dressed. Until I bore their same religious label, I would never truly fit in. I carried the weight and sadness of this reality for many years. I experienced this feeling as shame, as something fundamentally wrong with who I was, and I blamed religion for this deep feeling of inadequacy.

He took the wrath of the whole world’s sins upon His shoulders. He took the wrath that was stored up against every single one of these acts of evil, and He bore the flaming, searing, scorching, penalty for each.

boredom is key for developing our imagination. A child who is never bored has no space to dream, or to work up a solution to their predicament, and less reason to create.

Never waste a meal eating something boring when you could be trying something exciting. That’s part of the joy of travel, because food is such a brilliant way of racking up great memories. And remember, it’s hardly ever going to kill you.

Yes, actually. When I am on the labyrinth or writing to the Beloved in my journal, it’s the most amazing, exciting thing that has happened to me.” ​“So how would the Accuser benefit from making you feel foolish or bored?” ​“I would stop. I would stop walking the labyrinth. I would stop journaling. I would not touch the Bible out of fear-

People define love as the desire to possess their partner and make him or her a private property for them for a certain period of time then when they are bored they start the journey of searching again for an alternative for this partner, in my case you are my eternal love even if I won’t ever see you

There were just so many cafés now—bearing conceited names such as Charme, Rembrandt, La Muse—with their chairs and tables made of wicker, zinc, velvet, blond wood, and black metal, each establishment desperately trying to evoke Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Stockholm, or New York. Even the ashtrays bore edgy designer patterns evocative of Art Deco and the Belle Époque. And yet it has to be said that these new cafés of Bucharest lack the enfolding and layered elegance—and especially the intimacy—of cafés in Central Europe. I was still south of the Carpathians, in the former Byzantine and Turkish world. There was simply

Joshua couldn’t help but wonder why he went on this journey to begin with. Doubts rose in his mind—doubts of the justification of all this. Was it all worth it? He began to think that whatever it was that had pushed or pulled him to go and leave his world, his place of belonging, was probably just a dream, no more than the senseless musings of a bored existence.

I won’t bore you with the deeper moral or metaphoric meaning of the labyrinth. I will only say that it symbolizes the journey to discover the truth we all keep inside ourselves. It’s the search for the self through the projection of one’s being through the infinite. It’s a pilgrimage to a dimension that is yet to be explored, a boundary between the known and the unknown, between the human and the divine. In other words, the labyrinth not only hides a physical universe, but also a spiritual reflection.” Katherine

The best parts of Mumbai though are not the attractions and landmarks, but the vibrant, mesmerising journeys between them. I spent hours in a cab staring out of the window, and could easily spend hours more and never be bored.

Day by day, week by week, the dreams, the visions, came oftener, grew deeper. They were not occasional now, but occupied most of the day. We would see her rapt, as if in a trance, her eyes sometimes closed, sometimes open but unseeing, and always a faint, mysterious smile on her face. If any one approached her, or asked her something, as the nurses had to do, she would respond at once, lucidly and courteously, but there was, even among the most down-to-earth staff, a feeling that she was in another world, and that we should not interrupt her. I shared this feeling and, though curious, was reluctant to probe. Once, just once, I said: ‘Bhagawhandi, what is happening?’ ‘I am dying,’ she answered. ‘I am going home. I am going back where I came from – you might call it my return.’ Another week passed, and now Bhagawhandi no longer responded to external stimuli, but seemed wholly enveloped in a world of her own, and, though her eyes were closed, her face still bore its faint, happy smile. ‘She’s on the return journey,’ the staff said. ‘She’ll soon be there.’ Three days later she died – or should we say she ‘arrived’, having completed her passage to India?

IN A NUTSHELL Analyzing the effect a presentation has on you is a fantastic way to learn what works and what doesn’t when it comes to public speaking. If you don’t grab your audience’s attention within the first thirty seconds, your audience will mentally tune out of your presentation. Don’t bore your audience with introductory remarks. Begin with a story. Stories are powerful because people are hardwired to listen to stories. Stories take your audience on a mental journey. Audiences cannot resist a well-told story even if they try.

Nothing is impossible with God. (Luke 1:37) High in the snow-covered Alpine valleys, God works one of His miracles year after year. In spite of the extremes of sunny days and frozen nights, a flower blooms unblemished through the crust of ice near the edge of the snow. How does this little flower, known as the soldanelle plant, accomplish such a feat? During the past summer the little plant spread its leaves wide and flat on the ground in order to soak up the sun’s rays, and it kept that energy stored in its roots throughout the winter. When spring came, life stirred even beneath its shroud of snow, and as the plant sprouted, it amazingly produced enough warmth to thaw a small dome-shaped pocket of snow above its head. It grew higher and higher, and as it did, the small dome of air continued to rise just above its head until its flower bud was safely formed. At last the icy covering of the air compartment gave way, and the blossom burst into the sunshine. The crystalline texture of its mauve-colored petals sparkled like the snow itself, as if it still bore the marks of the journey it had endured. This fragile flower sounds an echo in our hearts that none of the lovely flowers nestled in the warm grass of the lower slopes could ever awaken. Oh, how we love to see impossible things accomplished! And so does God. Therefore may we continue to persevere, for even if we took our circumstances and cast all the darkness of human doubt upon them and then hastily piled as many difficulties together as we could find against God’s divine work, we could never move beyond the blessedness of His miracle-working power. May we place our faith completely in Him, for He is the God of the impossible.