My coworkers have often heard me say things like, “I yearn for boredom. Oh, how I long for a nice, boring, quiet day.” Sure, I say it to be humorous. But I also say it in all seriousness. For just a little while, I want to be unproductive and disconnected.

I’m not one of those who cannot stand a moment of time with nothing to do. So many people seem to have no tolerance for even a second of empty time. Therefore, cures for boredom have proliferated, with people seeking one activity after another to eradicate even a second’s silence, a moment’s inactivity.

Yet what I see is an odd sort of lethargy. People don’t seem really interested in anything; they do this and that and the next thing, but without enthusiasm or energy. All their connectivity notwithstanding, they are disconnected, not in a meditative way, but in a mode the French call ennui.

How can you know yourself; how can you find your center, your sense of balance, in the constant back-and-forth of one task, one computer game, one cell phone call and another?

It’s time to find some serious boredom and steep oneself in silence, thoughtfulness, mindfulness. We need time to recalibrate our senses and our values. Can we find our own responses to the great mysteries of life in a constant barrage of email and text messages, our addiction to the cell phone?

I say look for the opportunity for quiet moments—waiting for a bus, pausing for a moment before exiting the car, looking out the window at your desk—to find your bit of boredom, your expectation of immortality. There’s not much reason to hurry towards our deaths and every reason to enjoy the small pleasures of life, the odd bits of nothing time to listen to the silences. The silences in which all sorts of possibilities can arise, no longer shouted down by the clamor of reality.

My great-grandmother used to have a quiet cup of tea and a cookie at the end of the day. I think she was on to something.