In the season of COVID-19, many people are struggling with "keeping occupied" or fighting boredom.

Taking a look back at bygone eras in faraway lands, we can study activities that people spent a lot of time on for some guidance on how to handle these difficult times.

In short, I will argue that idle time is well-spent in memorizing things, whether this is technical/know-how things or cultural stuff (e.g. a musical piece, scriptures/texts). By training our attention to reproduce patterns of value we can find "internal stimulus" (i.e. motivation) to act with purpose wherever we happen to find ourselves.

The "Work/Life Balance" Concept

In the Western paid-by-the-hour or salaried systems of working, many of us have a fairly distinguished "on/off the job" mentality such that we get ideas like seeking a work/life balance. ¹ It seems that for most people, most of the time, such a strong distinction did not exist; indeed people lived without clocks and stressful time keeping for most of history. ²

Events other than mechanical hands pointing to integers set the rhythm of life. For instance, farmers worked according to seasons; craftsmen had clear objectives of what they were doing—this was their trade. In Ecclesiastes, we read:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

Ecclesiastes 3:1 (KJV)

"Time management" was not a problem that most people faced because they either faced coercion (people telling them what to do) or necessities for survival were evident enough. There may be "local boredom" within doing some monotonous task, but the "tyranny of choice" was less apparent because there were other forms of tyranny to be reckoned with.

The season of COVID-19 is challenging for many people because, among other reasons, external stimuli signalling time intervals for this-and-that are absent. While schools would have bells and clocks and short periods of time to shuffle between classes, such structures are absent in most people's remote setups. ³

Times of Waiting: The "Four Arts"

We have ample examples of people enjoying leisure time as well as filling in long hours during periods. Today, I'll be talking about Chinese aristocrats who had four favorite activities: 琴棋书画 qín qí shū huà "musical instruments, chess, calligraphy, and painting". ⁴

One common thread among all of these activities is that they were all culturally valued and that they indirectly trained abilities useful elsewhere.

The qín "musical instrument" refers to a stringed instrument, typically played as a solo instrument. The Chinese word for piano uses this same character: 钢琴 gāngqín—in many ways the Western classical music tradition jives well with Chinese interest in mastering dealing with instrumental complexity (often as a soloist). As with any other instrument (but particularly instruments used as "solo instruments"), playing qín required lots of practice and study; memorizing a piece and then executing it well requires training both hands and ears through many hours of concentrated practice.

Similar remarks may be made for chess playing. Good chess players do not just play once or twice when they are bored—they remember what did and didn't work from previous games they have played (and so good players will play a lot of games). Nowadays, anybody who wants to get serious at a strategy game of any sort (including online video games) will have to memorize certain "openings" (including "item builds" etc. in video games).

Calligraphy is not just about reproducing words, but reproducing words in a particular way. To do calligraphy is to engage cultural tradition, not just to make stuff "look pretty" or to go for "pure functionality" (as some nerds may be predisposed to try). To do calligraphy necessarily means looking beyond one's own likes and engaging a literary heritage.

Finally there is painting; painting requires training find observation skills and finding the "essence" of things—Chinese brush painting also takes an exceptional amount of dexterity because there is no easy "undo" button for ink committed to paper. Speed of execution is important to capture a bird flying away...

A bored Chinese aristocrat would be better advised to engage seriously in one of these activities rather than giving into vices like drunkedness or disturbing the Confucian peace. When one grew weary of any one of these, they knew of another art to pursue... While one might specialize or have a favorite among the arts, learning to appreciate all four of these can easily fill a lifetime.

Modern Times

Nowadays, we'll call the modern equivalents of many of the aforementioned activities "entertainment" or "hobbies"—if they happen to be prestigious or practical, we might call them "education" or "training". ⁵

We still have musical instruments; that connection is plain to see. There are more applications for qí "strategy games"; for instance one may regard computer programing as a kind of battle against a compiler/interpreter. I think that many video games—insofar as they are appreciated by society—are similar to qín and qí in that they demand dexterity of the fingers as well as a strategic mind to well. Most of us come from different traditions than Chinese aristocrats, however we all have culturally important things to copy, memorize and reproduce; we likewise have documents to compose.

Here, exercising the "blog format" I may regard myself as a modern practitioner of a kind of shū "calligraphy". There is a small technical element here (setting up a website, typing, etc.) comparable to understanding the fundamental technical requirements of doing calligraphy. Much of the challenge, however, comes from words and meanings not the form alone.

With regards to huà "painting", there are many, many avenues these days for expression in the graphic arts. On the one hand, we have traditional painting, street sketching, photography, etc. to reproduce what we already see in reality. Then, we have 3D modelling, digital painting, etc. to create new images the world has yet to see.

Time and Memory

Each of the "Four Arts" involves devoting lots of time and energy to memorization of some sort. To be able to do something reflectively, without slow deliberation, we must be trained in how to arrive at that information quickly; most quickly is through our minds. ⁶ The artist that is pushing to improve in their arts is not bored because they have skills to train, topics to research, and performances to give.

In this era of information overload, I think much of our challenge as modern people is to select among many options and choose a managable number of things that we want to obtain advanced proficiency in. Nobody has time to be good at everything, but developing strong skills in a handful of activities is a great way to both (1) dispell boredom, and (2) become more effective at acting in "the real world" outside of that activity.

Developing these skills involves remembering patterns, and memorizing stuff takes time. However, when we have more things memorized, we are always free to think and create regardless if our smartphones are plugged in. We can spontaneously enjoy one another's company without worrying about whether such-and-such playlist will load and if there will be ads. We are free from privacy concerns because we are not entering things into Google's search engine through Microsoft's operating systems.

So, there you have it. How Chinese aristocrats beat boredom and big brother. Amazing!