Boredom
She waits impatiently for her friend’s car to come down the road. Her life is full of watching the clock tick slowly, with irregular interruptions among the mundane routine occurrences. Her favorite show is on at 4pm, her family have dinner together in the evening, she reads many books and enjoys living vicariously through the heroes and heroines of the pages. Sometimes she does not leave her residence, just reading all day. Perhaps she has some daily goals, without which she would sit around and not accomplish anything, neither in joy nor pain. The moments when she is at her friend’s house are full of energy, where there is always music and dancing and laughter and movement and drama. She enjoys taking part in this energy, but when she returns to her own space she does not bring this energy with her. So she lives for the adventure others provide, but consumes it passively, like a viewer of a film.
He is bored, life is already written for him, nothing seems to move his heart. He knows how things function, how his life is lived, there is no surprise. When things pop up, he banalizes them into his boring scheme. When he wakes up in the morning he goes through his daily routine, forcing himself to fulfill his duties. Showering, dressing, eating, smiling, working. His moves come from the outside, not from the inside. He does not want to achieve something, he does not want to assume his power, he just wants rest, a dead comfort. He has no project for himself, his holidays are dictated by the publicities or by his relations. Ask him to choose a movie he wants to see, he will go with the convenience he finds on mass platforms. He just does not care. The irony is that because of his strong desire for peace, he moves away from his peace. Condemned to walk through life. His monotony and apathy has shaped his body’s posture to reflect his view towards life, that it is a burden, heavy, as if he were Atlas supporting the globe. He is an old soul. Before the calendar marks it, he accepts old age, interpreting each grey hair just as he accepts each friendship dying out, as a reflection of his boring attitude towards life slowly evolving into his inevitable disappearance in the memory of everyone and anyone he has ever met. He stays in his home place and his fortified routine, so when it is time to die, he is already dead to others, and the world continues without much notice.
Phenomenon of Boredom
Boredom is a filter that makes life greyscale. Despite the world existing in a magnificent range of colors, in a boredom paradigm everything is seen in dull shades of slate, smoke, iron, and stone. Even these colors can be made to glisten in the waves and sun at the beach, yet a boredom paradigm manages to find problems, or more precisely fails to find any interest, in any such scene. Bored people do not even know what they like or do not like—they have a desire to have desires, but find themself empty. The world is boring, and they are boring to the world.
Bored people find the lack of stimulation to be a deafening silence. Like being in an acoustic anechoic chamber engineered to absorb all sound waves, where individuals realize that they can hear their heartbeat, their blood rush, their bones creak, their normal movements in the stillness of no other sound waves, they can easily and quickly go mad with themself. They are disappointed to discover the world does not provide the energy they expect from the external, but are also unsatisfied with the energy they contain within themself.
There is a nice tension of the bored person’s relation to the world: they wait for stimulation from the other, in order to live, but they guard themself from receiving stimulation from the other, as if it is an unwelcome disturbance. So they want but do not want. External provocation is how they find some vibrancy in life, but they recoil or hide from the opportunity.
Bored people can have many faces, their appearance takes various modalities. They hide to protect their boredom paradigm in comfort. In order to have peace they can play roles with brillo, hiding their inconsistencies from the others. Superficiality is mastered. They are used to managing their image in order that nothing changes and others accept this drama so that neither the player nor the spectators need engage. This way bored people are welcome, others see them as a non danger, they are turned off and do not look to be turned on. Others already know them before they cross one of them. Their superficiality is presented as a sweet sugar but fleeting, without substance, without nourishment. Others have already interacted with them before, and will again, but learn to avoid, since the exchange is nice but not nourishing. Others generally find the interaction creates some indigestion of inconsistency. Just calories that nothing can metabolize.
The drama of this situation is that bored people nourish their unnourishment. They want to be sweet and attractive to the other, since the other is the source of any stimulation. But the bored want to consume, not to be loved, just to have peace while not being disturbed. Being superficial is a nice, quick way to dismiss the other, to say “fuck you” to the world, which is common among the masses of people in social functioning. This social functioning is reflected in the individual level, with social niceties, and in the political process, with formal functions of diplomacy. The codes are necessary, but without substance, as a performance of theater: “May I ask a question?”, “In my humble opinion”, “If I may be permitted to speak”, “Sincerely”, “Veuillez agréer, Madame, Monsieur, mes salutations distinguées.” People who feel bored make the others bored as a contamination.
There are moments of realization of this boredom, where the existence wants to stretch itself, but the moments are rather considered the anomaly, not normal, referred to as existential crisis or midlife crisis to accentuate their temporality and deviation from how one is supposed to live. One can solve this moment by buying a Porsche. The “crazy” or unexpected acts of that kind of person disturb order and common rules. The others take this behavior as a problem to solve, to pacify, denying power and freedom for another day, year, decade. The boringness becomes a dictator in the sense that people who want to break free from it are not welcome and have to be calmed down. Boring people are easy to control; human beings fear the new, and like to be ruled. In a political sense, escaping boringness is freaky because there is freedom, unexpected behavior and potential disorder, creative chaos. That is why, when the being of the person emerges, the observer smiles a moment, but afterwards feels discomfort, because they do not know the person anymore. The familiar boredom does not have the lead anymore so the individual becomes purely adventurer, with a desire to live. Existence fights: the individual wants to live.
Bored people build their own prison of existence. They get stuck in the lake of indecision. Controlled by the outside world, they do not decide, they do not take charge of their existence. In a world of possibilities, they like inaction the most. Another symptom is the absence of variability: they eat the same things, they go to the same places, they repeat the same stories because nothing ever happens in their life. If action is required, repetition is the path of least resistance. They are constrained into their little box, trying to disappear and accelerate time in order to be, at last, in peace.
The Creation of Boredom
Boredom can have different causes and be responded to with different reactions. In the stillness of peace and quiet, a rather conducive environment to thinking and self reflection, if there is an expectation or conditioning to have more movement, more energy, or more stimulation, the emptiness is more pronounced than the pleasantness of the stillness. Closely related to addiction, this tension for more movement, energy, and stimulation can cause various symptoms such as depression or anxiety and lead to multiple reactions.
The boredom paradigm is a state of lethargy, a term coming from the Greek to forget. Odysseus’ men become lethargic after eating the Lotus flowers, forgetting their humanness and desiring nothing but to continue to eat the Lotus flowers on the beautiful island where no one does anything but eat Lotus flowers. The sailors are no longer men, but consumers of drugs that strip them of desires like shells of humans, lobotomized. Homer here astutely connects humanness to an essential desire to strive for something beyond survival, to yearn for immortality, to be anxious about the state of a divine soul in a mortal body, which the men suspend with their Lotus eating. Odysseus must drag them, resisting, from their consumption and tie them to the ship to make their escape. In the boredom paradigm, like the sailors, individuals find life difficult, the struggle to improve senseless, comforting activities a pleasant escape to within, and provocation to leave the paradigm unwelcome.
The image of the juif errant, the artisan who refused to help Jesus carry the cross, reflects the bored person. God’s punishment was to walk and walk without purpose and through ages eternally. He does not age; he is undead and begging for his liberation. Trapped by himself, with himself, the bored guy is poor because of his blocked soul. Death is the preferred option; existence is a curse.
One is not born bored. It is not a natural attitude in the life of animals, but one that emerges uniquely in humanity. It is an artificial construction, a daily process from a person who decides to construct it by time, through the years like digging a castle in earth and then it becomes their own trap that they can not escape. This slow and subconscious process makes the person unable to recognize that this castle is constructed of bad faith. They stick to this bad faith image of themselves, living in greyscale, unable to think of themself differently. They have no color perspective anymore, just a plain castle, sad and deteriorating. No one wants to visit that kind of castle. Its claims to distinction are soon forgotten to history.
Absurdity
Boredom can be caused by not giving any substantial meaning to one’s existence. Things appear, one manages them, and what? One considers themself a consumer of life, not a creator of meaning. The example of this state of mind is described well in Camus with the nonchalance of the protagonist in the book The Stranger. He looks at his life as a cow looks at the hikers, without enthusiasm, without passion, as boring. The problem is the relation to the absurdity of life. One can relate to absurdity with excitement, freedom, or another enthusiasm. Or one can choose to relate to this absurdity with boredom, accepting second hand but not really caring about the meaning others give to life. The attitude of boredom is apathy and disinterest, since the possibilities are quite endless, but the freedom is either not recognized, too heavy, or ugly. Because life is absurd, the quantity of choices, of possibilities, of responsibilities one has within reality have great potential, even the potential to be reduced to nothing.
Complacency
A lazy person becomes bored because nothing happens, everything is routine, each day is an eternal return. What he sees, he manages, he already knows, nothing is surprising in itself. There is no challenge, the person is in a honeyed comfort: sticky, sweet, not proportioned. Routine is the manifestation of complacency, it can be accepted even if it leads to boredom, especially if it leads to boredom, since this is what they know and there is nostalgia for it and intolerance for anything else. Change can be unbearable and lead to movement and risk. The complacency can be in usual practical habits but also usual mental habits. Staying in the same paradigm, they chat with like minded others in order to receive the echo of their own thinking and acceptance that boredom is the normal way of life. It is entre-soi, a circular horizon. Like a rat in his wheel, as the momentum builds, more speed is needed, until there is too much and he falls. They complain and mourn that there is nothing new under the sun, yet they continue to live safely, within their little world, scrolling through life as if life is an endless social media feed, without bringing challenge to theirself, so the dullness is self created and exponentially reoccurring. The relationship to dullness can be safe and comforting or victim—there is some benefit they get from dullness so that they continue in this paradigm, whether to excuse them from effort, responsibility, freedom, or existence.
Dissatisfaction
Some people are eager to have newness or otherness at any and every moment. They need excitement and stimulation all the time, since it is the only way they know that allows them to feel alive. Repetition is not their cup of tea, although routine, the quick succession of days and weeks, busy nothings are rather necessitated by the passage of time. Their negative attitude towards infinite patterns comes from a desire for stimulation from the outside, in the victimhood paradigm, since they can not or will not find interest in their own self. They observe that others are not bored, and suspect that there is some excitement, happiness, or interest existing in the world, but they are not privy to enjoying it like the others. There is behind this self dissatisfaction, a cruel disgust of themselves—they are boring. If they have not learned to be at peace, to take interest in the world and themself, to create their own energy, to compose their own meaning and challenge, they only have themself when the music stops. They can not manage time alone—the peace is overwhelming since it confronts them with their own ugly being, so they stick with exteriority. They fail to find good company in themself. Alone with their own being, they are left with no alterous provocation; they are left to confront their own ugliness. They manage to live with some outside provocation, but they wait for the provocation, apathetic or unaware they could create it themself.
Common Reactions to Boredom
A common reaction to boredom is to fill the void with addictive habits such as excessive eating, shopping, drinking, smoking, taking stimulants like caffeine or stronger drugs, risk taking, or thrill seeking. Activities that bring some outside or artificial stimulus, but caught in routine still. These activities can easily be addictive behaviors in themselves, but in this instance they are not habitually done as directly addictive, but for the sake of filling the void. If addicts can find thrills in an activity, there is some hyper stimulation to distract from the steady and continuous monotony of life, which is the draw for those in boredom.
Bovarysme is a term that nicely captures a particular attitude to the neglect of being present in reality as a result of dissatisfaction with life. Madame Bovary lacks contentment with life and fails to be at peace with her own self, so seeks to mask the boredom with risk, excitement, and blatant embracement of bad faith. Madam Bovary wants to feel alive, so she finds avenues to create movement. She projects, desiring things that she believes will make life interesting, such as Paris, dance, beautiful dresses, affection, and sex. Her story is the pursuit for more movement than the status quo.
Another reaction to boredom is melancholia, which embraces the mood as normal, yet negative; a way of being, victim to emotions and the limited doses of energy the world has to offer. There is a denial that the bored one has power to be unbored. There is with this denial as well an acceptance of the concept as identity, as if they are bored because fate has constructed the conditions for them to have a bored life—life is boring, they are boring, the world is boring.
Those in the boredom paradigm also have a tendency to enjoy sleep, naps, and generally spending time in bed lethargically. Life is boring, so there is no significant difference between sleeping and waking, besides that the state of consciousness involves an awareness of his own dullness. So sleep is rather a break from the heavy burden of his own boredom, an excuse for not having the energy to enjoy existence, and an opportunity to dream of something other than what is his own reality.
Relation to Anxiety
Anxiety can be related and relevant to the topic of boredom, but the agitated state of anxiety has more energy than the state of boredom allows, so the two rather exchange places than coexist. Both have a desire to kill time and kill the mind. The difference can be the paradigm: whether the reaction to stillness is specific disappointment in expectation for movement, resulting in negative energy; or stress, guilt, or general dissatisfaction with existence, resulting in lethargy. Anxiety is a consequence of a deeper problem such as recognition, being loved or otherwise. Anxious people have a hard time with themself, but they are alive in and confronted with their impotency. In boredom, there is also impotency, but it manifests as a mourning desire. Boredom is a refusal of life, a reaction to the multiplicity of possibilities in existence, the plurality that is in the world. The bored person does not want to discover depth. The bored person looks for the absolute in greyscale, not the sum of possible colors whether confronted with the world or a blank canvas.
A Bored Person is a Boring Person
A bored person is a boring person. They depend on alterity to bring them energy they do not create themself, so it naturally follows that they are energy depleters rather than energy generators for others. They consume rather than offer, so they expect others to perform and entertain while they do not generously reciprocate. Social extroverts may adopt a boring person as a friend with intrigue, since occasionally quiet and shy individuals just need a little provocation to come out of their shell and surprise others with their observations and wit. The contrast between them also gives the social extrovert the audience and license to be more extravagant. But sometimes there is no depth, and provocation is met with emptiness, or entertainment is not met with due applause. If someone looks at the world and sees dull shades of grey, there is only so much others want to share in their energy. Others refer to them as a downer, a drag, a bummer, a bore, a wet blanket, a stick-in-the-mud, a rabat-joie. As well, the bored person generally avoids social situations because they find little reward from interactions with others, and would rather stay in their own curated space occupied with their own comfort hobbies.
Provoking the Bored
Good! You have a world of possibilities, what do you want to make of life?
Who are you that you find yourself boring?
Can you find peace in your boredom?
Of course one can easily advise a bored person to dive into life and do strange things, visit new places, meet new people. This provocation can work for certain types of bored people, the ones who have not divorced with reality and have enough autonomy to open themself to possibility. But there are some bored people more advanced in their boring life who reject novelty, reject challenge, even refuse life more radically. These ones are harder to move because they connect their identity to their bored attitude—they believe they are bored, as a religion. They protect and defend their boredom. They need to be reconciled with their own power, their own possibility to live. They need some challenge that evolves life as they know it, very close to their core, impossible to return to the old normal. But they must welcome and accept provocation, and they depend on the other to bring it.
The Good Use of Boredom
Boredom can be a provocation to live more consciously and meaningfully. If life is boring, boredom can be the signal that activities and values are in need of revision. Boredom can be a provocation to confront the self: self reflection, introspection, critical examination. Boredom is rather a relation or attitude towards life or the self, so the bored person can take the opportunity to ask who they are that they are bored. Boredom can be a provocation to create: meaning, experience, innovation, art, or courage. In stillness, there is possibility and freedom to fill the void with anything. Boredom can be a provocation to innovate: to challenge the expectations, goals, and status quo. If life is boring, the bored person can bring newness to what life entails. Boredom can be a provocation to appreciate: the routine, the energy when it is present, the peace when it is not. The contrast between energy and engagement versus calm and rest is good for the mind, which thrives on varying and diversified stimuli.