It had been a while since I'd felt this kind of boredom. I stared at the empty bookshelf, its barren shelves a testament to my recent literary marathon. I'd devoured every novel I'd been looking forward to, and now, nothing seemed to spark my interest.
"What now?" I muttered into the silence, my voice breaking the stillness of the room.
I glanced around, taking in the mild disarray of my surroundings. It wasn't a disaster zone, but it wasn't a haven either. My gaze lingered on the clutter for a moment before I sighed.
"Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?" Nietzsche's words surfaced from memory, unbidden yet perfectly apt. I chuckled at the irony. If I was going to pass the time, I might as well make it worthwhile.
With newfound purpose, I stood and began to tidy up. It started small—picking up scattered papers, tossing out old receipts—but soon I was fully immersed. I rearranged books, dusted surfaces, and even mopped the floor. The faint, clean scent of freshly laundered bedsheets filled the air as I changed them. By the time I finished, the room—and my mood—felt lighter, brighter.
"Cleaning is a way to exercise control in a world of chaos," someone had once said. Maybe they were right.
But as I sank back into my chair, that familiar question resurfaced.
"Now what?"
The silence stretched on, thick and unyielding. Restlessness pushed me to open an app and start scrolling. Time slipped away unnoticed, the faint glow of dawn creeping through the curtains before I realized it.
This, all of this—mindlessly scrolling, chasing fleeting distractions—I couldn't help but feel a little foolish. But then again, I'd done one thing right: I'd cleaned the room. Small as it was, it felt like a step forward.
Einstein's words came to mind, uncomfortably relevant:
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
I laughed softly at my own expense. It wasn't much, but perhaps this was my way of climbing out of the self-imposed poverty of the mind and soul.
For now, I'll keep threading these small, positive actions together, hoping they'll weave into something greater. It's not much, but it's a start.