Boredom

Often when I'm stuck in Brentwood traffic I'll look around and try to find a young female driver who is not talking on her cell phone. How many of those calls are really necessary to make before arriving home? How many are just a way to avoid bordeom? Of course, bordeom is scary because it might lead to a little introspection. Winter Prosapio nails it:

Boredom is a gift, really. Like a seedling suddenly free of the shadow of an ancient oak, boredom becomes the open sky that lets our inner selves stretch and reach beyond our mental shadows.

We rarely let ourselves get past the initial anxiety of having nothing to do, nothing to do but think.
I think that when a generation grows up with no opportunity to be bored, it is being robbed of the gifts that arise only when we turn that corner of boredom and run into ourselves.

All we can wish for, I suppose, is spotty cell coverage.