What Hamilton can teach us about boredom

Never a dull moment. (Pulling Down the Statue Of King George III, New York City. Johannes Adam Simon Oertel, c. 1852)

Here we go again! My seven-year-old niece is sitting next to me in the car, passionately rapping about American military history.

The words fly of her tongue with a flow worthy of DMX, even though she can’t quite say all her R’s: “They're battering down the Battery, check the damages! We gotta stop 'em and rob 'em of their advantages!”

And the words, of course, are Lin-Manuel Miranda’s. The pop-cultural juggernaut that is Hamilton: An American Musical has quickly and deeply infiltrated the playgrounds and playlists of very small people. It actually makes perfect sense. Kids love the feeling of being able to perfectly mimic complex, multi-layered show tunes, and they pride themselves on flawlessly replicating dense rap lyrics — with Hamilton, you get a twofer.

We enjoy what we’re good at, especially when it’s in that sweet spot where it’s just challenging enough to keep us on our toes, but not so much that we falter. Here’s the question I find interesting: If something passes that “Goldilocks” test, does it matter what it is? In other words, could Hamilton just as easily be Grant or Titan if Miranda had been inspired by a different epic Ron Chernow biography?

My answer is yes. I believe that, in line with Dr. Dennis Cox’s assertion that “It doesn’t matter what you choose, as long as you commit to it 100%,” anything can be compelling if you invest earnestly in studying it.

Nothing is intrinsically boring. It is only our lack of engagement that makes it that way. Chernow’s scholarship made Alexander Hamilton’s life story accessible to the reader, inspiring Miranda with its dramatic possibilities. Miranda, in turn, brought Alexander Hamilton to life onstage. Each of these men made an investment that paid off. And now, zillions of schoolchildren are making their own investment, learning not only the songs of the musical Hamilton but also the story of Hamilton himself, with some even branching out to learn more about the American Revolution and American history in general. Geeking out and going all the way down the rabbit hole with something is the furthest thing from dull.

Unfortunately, school is still mostly set up to prevent students and teachers from engaging intensely with a topic or skill. There is a whole lot of boredom as students are shuffled from three-week unit to three-week unit, learning about water but never getting wet.

However, each and every topic in the curriculum could be made utterly enthralling. Consider that everything from fungi to pi to poetry, everything that we study, is part of our collective human knowledge because someone was excited enough about it to devote a life to it. We do a disservice to each other and ourselves when we buy into the message that, yes, this is boring, but we have to get through it anyway. Someone saw the magic, once upon a time — if we dig deeply enough, we can, too.

Many of us have our favorite “subjects” that we spark to, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if we find ourselves bored because we have to participate in something that we find less appealing, we might discover that the boredom evaporates as we drop our preconceptions and decide to venture into a world we know little about. Look what happened when Lin-Manuel Miranda decided to pick up a biography of Alexander Hamilton.