The most boring verb in the world

The majority of verbs are actions we can imagine: The dog ran. Billy ate his vegetables. Gillian slept for ten hours. Even a tricky verb like "exists" is imaginable: The alien exists in another dimension. But what about Hamlet's well-known dilemma: To be or not to be? To be is the same verb (the infinitive form) as I am, You are, It is, We are, You (all) are, They are. Personally, I think is and all of its forms make the most boring verb in the world. What does is look like? How can I imagine it? A Zen monk meditating comes to mind, and he would say that meditating is anything but boring. However, writing He meditates is far more imaginable than He is. I mention the most boring verb in the world because people have trouble identifying these verbs in sentences. Remembering "is" as the most boring verb will help you find them in sentences like Gwyn is cute or The meeting was too long. (Was is the past form of is.) Also, watch out for sentences beginning with There is or There are. In the sentence "There are only so many hours in a day" the subject/verb is hard to identify because the verb is so blah and the subject "hours" is inverted with There. On the other hand, sometimes blah is exactly what you need. I wouldn't rewrite it as "A day can only hold so many hours" even though many teachers suggest rewriting every There are. I think the rewrite sounds pretentious.