portsmouth abbey news
Cultivating Leisure vs. Avoiding Boredom
Dom Luke Childs Lecture challenges modern instincts
Portsmouth Abbey students began the week before winter term final exams by attending a thought-provoking lecture in the Dom Luke Childs Lecture Series, delivered by Dr. Kevin Gary, author of “Why Boredom Matters.” With a well-placed joke about the monotony of the Monday morning variety, Gary, who is also a philosopher and professor at Hillsdale College, engaged his audience in an inquiry that has perplexed deep thinkers from Aristotle to Blaise Pascal to current Abbey students: What do we do when we’re bored?
Challenging the modern instinct to treat boredom as an enemy, something to be dodged through distraction. Gary instead urged students to cultivate meaningful leisure, a practice distinct from passive amusement. Drawing from TS Eliot, Kierkegaard, and Albert Borgmann, he argued that boredom isn’t just a nuisance—it’s a signal. Ignored, it pushes toward avoidance (endless scrolling) or resignation (giving in to apathy). A better path, he suggested, is focal practice— completing activities like deep conversation, long walking, reading a big book, or making music - that demand attention and restore the self.
The conversation was well-received by students and quickly turned philosophical, with faculty posing insightful (sometimes humorously long) questions. The response to one teacher’s inquiry about radical doubt? "Radical doubt is something we should radically doubt," Gary said, suggesting that persistent doubt over the things that make up our lives may quickly become paralyzing. When another asked how to achieve success without being consumed by it, his advice was simple yet profound: good friends and reflection.
Dr. Gary’s parting challenge: take a boredom audit. Identify two focal practices. And don’t be afraid to do them imperfectly—as G.K. Chesterton reminds us, "Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly."
Portsmouth Abbey students left assembly a little less bored and armed with a few strategies for cultivating leisure: not just entertaining oneself but learning to engage deeply with themselves and the world around them.
Photo credit: Hillsdale College.