On Mending, a Passage -- by Alex Ranieri
Many have been extolled the external virtues of mending—the help to one’s pocket and to the planet of reattaching a button, rather than chucking its blouse on the landfill, are too well-known, and well-explained elsewhere, to require attention here. I choose rather to praise mending’s internal effects—in particular, its ability to make room in the day for boredom.
This virtue belongs not to mending alone. Any mundane task where attention is superfluous will have the same wholesome tendency; hand-washing the dishes, for instance, is an excellent stimulator of boredom.
Boredom has, after all, become a luxury, where it was once an inevitable daily occurrence. It is a luxury well worth an outlay of time. To be bored, rather than to admit a stain on one’s moral character, is to open the window to the fantastical. It is only when we are bored to tears that the mind deigns to rouse itself, and entertain us.
However—to be bored and idle is too apt to lead to fretfulness. Such a state brings out the hypochondriac in all of us, whether it be physically, mentally, or spiritually. One man lolling on the sofa is certain the pang in his side is his doom; the next is quickly convinced that all about him despise and wish him ill; and the last, and least fortunate among them, begins in despair to contemplate the vastness of the universe.
The human body, accustomed by millennia to near-constant occupation, does not tolerate well having nothing to do. It is therefore wise to busy one’s fingers darning a sock or patching a skirt, that the mind may slip from their tenacious grasp unnoticed.
