How boring would war be? Painful is the answer. In class on Tuesday we briefly touched on just how boring your time at war would be. I am not very good at volleyball so I would not want to play that, a soccer ball would get flat and rugby would lead to someone getting horribly hurt. The question then is, what would I do?
A Yo Yo would be great, but what would happen if the string got tangled? My sole entertainment would be bust. A pack of cards? What would happen if I lost one card, every trick and game would be ruined. If I kept to the plan and was able to keep a hold of every card I could start to play poker, but what would I gamble on? Helmet? Nope, need that. Gun? I suppose it was getting heavy. Yo Yo? Perfect. What other forms of entertainment could you find to do while at war? I could teach myself to dance, but whom would I practice with? "Sergeant, may I ask you for a dance" may not be the best option. I took my quest to find solutions to boredom one step further and found which gave me a large list of things to do while bored. The one that stood out to me the most, was to play dead. While at war and bored, the last thing I would recommend to do would be to play dead. You could continuously yell, "Hit the deck" for enjoyment but this may also lead to your actual death. How about starting your own television show and have different soldiers every week be contestants. Which game show would work however? My personal preference would be American Gladiators. Not only would it be very patriotic, it would also enable the soldiers to do what they are all best at: run around and hurt others and have no reason why.
In all honesty, war would drive me crazy. I cannot even imagine what I would get myself into, let alone what I would find that would bring me happiness. But war is not meant to be happy or fun, and you are definitely not to spread your enjoyment if you do find it. The list of things to do while bored may look short and simple yet it has taken me a considerate amount of time to complete. What really can you do? I myself was starting to become bored just trying to think of things to do while bored, when I finally realized the answer I had been looking for. To avoid boredom while at war, bring a pad or paper, pencil and pen and start to draw. Draw the pictures that you see while traveling around and witnessing these life-changing experiences. Soldiers at war are known for writing but if you are able to express your emotions through pictures, you could even sell your art work for large funds when you get back home. For goodness sake however, if you also bring a pack of cards, don't gamble your pen or pencil away.
3 comments:
I loved this blog!!! It is so true...while I was reading it, I was wondering what I would do. I would read, but that would get boring, I would go for a walk, but that can only be fun so many times. When you say that you would become bored trying to find things to do to keep from being bored, I laughed. It's so true. War is not meant to be fun; soldiers are not meant to have fun, and they don't, I imagine.
There is nothing more ture than your analysis of boredom here. War is a relentless repeat of the day before, one day of gunfire followed by another, and another, and another. I’m sure it becomes to feel very much like the worst day of your life has been put in repeat mode. A philosopher once argued that hell would be just that, the never-ending experience of the worst moment of your life. In such a horrible situation it is odd to consider something so mundane as boredom, but it must be the only means soldiers have for coping with the unbearable situation in which they are trapped. I personally think I would spend so much time worrying about the source of every little sound I heard that I would not find any time to experience boredom, which I believe would lead to my inevitable state of psychosis from the over-stimulation of my brain and fight or flight response. In summary, boredom sounds like a much more promising fate, although equally unpleasant.
I completely agree that war is boring. If you come to think of it, soldiers have absolutely nothing to do but wait for orders. Half of the time they are not fighting and instead they are sleeping with women or just trying to find a way for time to fly by. I can’t even imagine how those soldiers that fought in the Vietnam War made it through the boredom of all those years in war… I mean, if I get bored in my room, where I have a TV, a computer, a bed where I can sleep, and many other things… what can you do if you are bored when you are in a middle of a war? If you ever wonder WHO makes up jokes and all of the games that exist… probably the soldiers in war trying not to get bored to death.
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