"I am bored"

“I am bored”! Every one of us must have used this sentence at-least a 1000 times in our lives to describe the awesome state of mind we are in at that point in time. Specially, during your summer vacations when you realize that you are the only one who’s jobless!
My mum always used to tell me, that she never got bored when she was young. But back then, I used to think that she was just trying to push me into doing something constructive (that’s what mums do the best, don’t they!). Today, I realize that it might have been true. The older generation didn’t have any reason to be bored!
Now-a-days we get bored because of the options available to entertain ourselves. If you get bored of the T.V get hooked to your music system, if you are bored of that, go on to your computer, if not, play video games, if not that simply sleep. I wonder what our parents used to do in their free times! Today, we cannot imagine a life without electricity. We are so dependent on it that we start feeling miserable if we have load shedding for more than 1 hour.
The options that have been provided to us have made us independent, selfish, reduced our patience as well as made us less tolerant to others. We do not need company these days. Self-entertainment choices have eaten up the chances of meeting friends and having a good time. A similar thing happened to me a couple of days back. Electricity was cut-off in our area for most of the part of the day. Then came the worst, it didn’t come at night as well. So now, with NO OPTIONS left we decided to talk and chat through the time till we usually crash out. So one discussion led to another and then we realized that only the two of us were talking. The third person, at first tried playing with his mobile, got ‘BORED’ of it, then tried to lie down with eyes closed, got ‘BORED’ of it as well, and this was happening, obviously because he was again ‘BORED’ of our talks!
What followed completely took me by surprise. He got up and started walking off! On asking the reason, we got the same answer, “I am bored”!!! It’s become so easy for us just to think about ourselves becoming selfish in the process. It’s not like we can always have discussions that will interest the other person, right? But it’s simple and it’s like this, I guess- If I am not getting entertained by you then I don’t have to subject myself to anything, even if I am at a social function or just sitting around and chatting away. Moreover, most people after being ‘bored’ end up doing stupid things. Now that there wasn’t any other option available, that friend of ours decided to go for a walk, with no lights on the street with atleast 100 dogs around!!!
I feel mom was right (moms are always right, aren’t they?....:-)). They might not have been bored anytime in their youth. I didn’t ask the question as to what did they used to do in such a situation as it never struck me that she could be saying the truth. But now, yes, the next time I meet her, will surely ask and get it posted here as “The Answer”……Lol.