Keep Yourself Company
Imagine yourself on an international flight, from Vancouver to Osaka. Most people would bring a book or a device to entertain themselves during the eleven1 hour flight. But imagine how it would feel if you had nothing during those eleven hours. Imagine sitting with yourself, wallowing in your own thoughts or long stretches of time. It would likely be incredibly boring, and slightly painful. But at its core, you’re just sitting there and existing; there’s nothing inherently negative or painful about that. So why do we actively distract ourselves and block out our thoughts, just to avoid keeping ourselves company?
Boredom
Boredom is the obvious answer. Boredom is what you get when you take away your brain’s source of stimulation, and akin to a whiny child, your brain will2 likely rebel. Boredom is somewhat comparable to hunger, as it’s your body sending you signals that you’re deprived of something, but the main difference is, boredom isn’t going to kill you; boredom is tolerable. No one has died because they forgot to bring their book on a flight, and no one has died by sitting in silence, listening to their thoughts.
When you sit in silence, your brain has less external stimuli to focus on, and this causes the brain’s default mode network (DMN) to activate (Danckert and Merrifield, 2018)3. This state of the brain activates when the brain is awake, but at rest, and unfocused on the outside world. And it makes sense why DMN activity would be unpleasant, especially when we can’t tolerate boredom. Research suggests that DMN activity is linked to rumination in patients with MDD (Chou et al., 2023)4, and higher activity has been found in patients with chronic stress, even during cognitively challenging activities, which can cause a decrease in focus and concentration (Azarias et al., 2025)5.
However, DMN activity, while correlated with certain mental disorders, has many positive benefits. The DMN is associated with introspection, autobiographical memory, and internal processing (Raichle, 2015)6, and it works with the brain’s salience network to handle changes within the environment effectively by switching between activation and deactivation (Menon & Uddin, 2010)1. An active DMN also stimulates creativity, as creative ideas are characterized by increased functional connectivity between the inferior prefrontal cortex and the DMN (Beaty et al., 2014)8.
Focus
Taking a step away from the research, the increase in screen time for almost everyone is a likely cause of people generally spending less time with themselves. Reflect on your own life; when was the last time you sat in silence for more than five minutes? When you’re taking a walk or eating breakfast, do you let yourself exist peacefully, or do you pull out your phone or listen to music?
The uncomfortability of keeping yourself company can also be attributed to your mind’s desire to focus. When you’re focusing on work, on chores or responsibilities, or on entertainment, your mind is concentrating on one task, or one stimulus. When you’re sitting by yourself, you’re not really doing much. You’re not working or making progress towards your goals, and it can feel like the time you’re spending could be spent more efficiently. When you’re sitting by yourself, without any stimuli, your mind starts to wander. Introspective thoughts and memories start to resurface; insecurities and worries are given time to be dwelled on.
And while it can be uncomfortable keeping yourself company, it’s nice to spend some time introspecting and reflecting. Because in a world where everything is trying to grab your attention, the most valuable thing you can do is to control what you give it to.
Life Update!
November is here, and the early action deadline has passed. There are less than two more months until the regular decision deadline, and my progress on my supplemental essays has been mediocre. I’ve recently been focusing on an application to a study abroad program, and while it’s taken up a lot of my time, I don’t want to pass up an incredible opportunity, even if I am9 unlikely to get accepted (I guess the same thing could be said about extremely prestigious universities).
But life has been going great, and a few interesting things have happened. The main one is the trivia night that I helped organize and run along with thirteen other students. We had around 150 students participate and we raised plenty of money for charity. I got to MC a round, and received positive feedback from my friends (although their opinion is likely biased). At the end of the night, we had karaoke for students who wanted to participate, and I was pressured by my friends to sing Soda Pop by Saja Boys with them. I have never heard the song, and I only knew how the chorus went. That, combined with the fact that none of them knew Korean, and the lyrics were displayed in romaja (Korean romanization), meant that it went pretty badly. I feel like, even though my hangul reading speed isn’t amazing, it’s still so much easier than reading romaja. Either way10, it was all in good fun, and it really doesn’t matter. No one cares that karaoke doesn’t always go well, and it's gonna be alright11.
Also, I rediscovered Violeta by IZ*ONE and it’s so good! It's such a classic12 IZ*ONE song. Hyewon’s lines (어서 내게 더 더 더 네 맘을 열어줄래), Hitomi’s lines, or really her only line if you don’t count the 넌 나의 비올레타 (세상에 맘을 열어 네게 더 귀 기울여), and Yujin’s lines (널 닮은 하늘에 숨겨왔던 마음을 기다렸던 순간을) are so satisfying. A bit too satisfying; it’s been stuck in my head for a while.
1. IVE reference!↩
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