I go outside of what I'm supposed to be doing.

So one day I was waiting for my father to pick me up in front of a church, and while I was waiting on this quiet Tuesday morning, I started thinking about my failures as a student and my failures in my studying and was really just in a slump.

I was taken by these odd looking shrubs placed near the front door of the church. The leaves were tiny and blade-like, and they were grouped in little clusters all over very thin long-ish branches. How fascinating the design, I thought to myself as I started to feel the little prickly leaves, turning them over in my hand, observing the little creases on each leaf. I looked a little deeper and noticed that there were brown little clusters of leaves hidden near the base of the shrub hidden from plain sight. I felt sad seeing this otherwise healthy looking tree conceal such a dismal little sight as that. I reckon that particular little branch never had a chance of growing to their full splendor.

I started thinking to myself about those leaves… And I started to wonder: who was to blame for their not being able to simply bask in the sun? It was a silly question, but in my defense I was young. I blamed the other leaves at first, since they took up all the sunlight and never gave those poor clusters a chance to grow, but I realized that these leaves had no say in the matter. They just did what they did best. They needed sunlight too, and they had what was needed to get it, so natural selection did what it did and now everyone who was lucky to have wider leaves is now on top, and whoever was at the bottom was out of luck, I guess. And yet it still seemed so cruel to me that life was as thus. Unfairness is a natural part of existence and is used daily by those living to continue living while leaving others to die, perhaps without even realizing it. What makes humans different is the need to make things fair, to rebel, perhaps not in actuality but definitely psychologically, against evolution by letting those who would normally die live.

These weren't great thoughts by any means, nor were they original thoughts, or even coherent thoughts, as I was only 15 at the time, but I was out of my slump and I got motivated to learn more about humanity and nature.

Or, if what I said wasn't anything interesting, here's a similar experience by Richard Feynman, a man much more interesting than I:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/10036024/Richard-Feynman-...

The relevant part is here, although the entire article is worth a read:

Physics had slipped down his list of priorities, but he suddenly rediscovered his love for the subject in a most unexpected way. In the canteen at Cornell one lunchtime he became distracted by a student, who had thrown a plate into the air. As it clattered onto the floor Feynman observed that the plate rotated faster than it wobbled. It made him wonder what the relationship was between these two motions.

Sometimes you go outside and do something you've never done before, or just be in a different context, and you'll find yourself in a situation where your interest in rekindled by a seemingly unrelated event that turns out to be very related. Being bored I guess is the wanting to be derailed from your situation, so the solution is to let yourself be derailed and you'll find yourself naturally coming back.