Boredom's Role in Our Daily Lives
Everything that we want is in reach of our hands. Whether that may be the optimized pleasures of either sense of hearing or taste, we have it all. Things weren’t always like this. Such a wide range of accessibility to pleasures was not common even fifty years ago.
But especially when profits-driven corporations realize that we can hack the human mind through spending millions of dollars making refined trial-and-error products to scratch those exact itches we crave, whether that’s junk food or a video game, things start to make perfect sense.
The sudden spike in the variety of pleasures and its decimal optimization sounds good to many since it’s all but a transactional exchange between a product and our money.
This way of thinking isn’t wrong in theory but with how invasive things are and with how common they are, even with the smallest toolkit, things start getting messier.
Naval Ravikant said, “In an age of abundance, pursuing pleasure for its own sake creates addiction.”
It’s just true because the world we live in today is different. Everything is in abundance so we have a mismatch of natural and artificial desires causing us addictions which we clearly don’t want nor need to any meaningful degree.
Beyond the theory
Whenever we can, we optimize our entertainment by using our phone or listening to music even in the smallest intermittent chunks of time whether that’s waiting in line or for a bus.
We disregard since it’s time that’s going to be wasted anyway by wandering directionless in our mind so why not get a quick dopamine pack through scrolling reels or our favorite album.
But everything does have trade-offs. In this case, the trade of being overstimulated and chasing after dopamine every second results into a life where we essentially don’t ever meaningfully think.
This doesn’t mean, though, that music is terrible and listening to podcasts or audiobooks is fine. My point isn’t the hobby itself, it’s that spending little to no time doing absolutely nothing or being in a state of boredom is good.
The benefits of boredom are not obvious at first considering how counterintuitive they are. After all, we always think in terms of either working or not working.
The modern world is designed such that we either do an action of importance (work, family and bills) or we are in a state of leisure (video games, movies and sports) but this is not true.
The problem is that, if we always consume content and only act without planning then when will we ever truly sit down and process it?
Why boredom?
Boredom is essentially a state of being underwhelmed by life. It’s a moment of our life where none of the options we seek are interesting enough to motivate us to move our bodies and mind to do them.
Boredom in life, especially in these pocket chunks of life are special moments to sit down and process. It’s important to not overstimulate ourselves and let the mind think and wander.
Only then, can we truly think about the future and get an idea of ourselves through rumination and engage in self-introspection. This is exactly why shower thoughts are said to be so enlightening.
Processing our life though, doesn’t have to be a planned goal either. We have many moments like this throughout our day. It might be in the form of sitting in a park, driving your vehicle, eating your lunch alone and many more.
Take this as an opportunity to relax and tune in to what your mind has to say. You might be surprised what you end up realizing, good or bad. So, the next time you wait for a bus, just sit down and let your mind wander as it is.
A common complaint people have is that boredom causes negativity which is why they would prefer not being as such but that’s the surprising purpose of boredom.
Boredom can be a negative state obviously because we don’t experience a heightened pleasure and also since we end up facing problems we don’t address and facing problems head-on was never easy, physically or mentally.
It’s only natural and normal to feel negativity as a result. What you usually end up with is suppressing your problems by numbing them to constant 24/7 entertainment in all shapes or forms.
An absolute marvel that it can occur but also a pity of our modern world that such a lifestyle is possible but also rather common.
Research on boredom & philosophers
There’s an interesting study done on boredom. The study was essentially asking them to pass time with their own thoughts for 12 to 15 minutes. The alternative was to give themselves a mild electric jolt.
If you read so far, you know where this is going. Unfortunately, about 75% of men and 25% of women gave themselves an electric jolt to pass the time. Perhaps if you didn’t believe the severity of the issue, maybe you do know.
It’s an interesting question to ask yourself: if you don’t enjoy your own company then is suffering your own making or others?
Boredom, however, wasn’t a phenomenon of recent history. It was something cared for and noted about from the beginning of time. Here are a few philosophers who I believe explained the different aspects of boredom quite well:
Arthur SchopenhauerArthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a German nihlist known for his work, The World as Will and Representation. mentions it as well. He talks about it in passing in his essay, ‘On the Sufferings of the World’:
“These admit of many gradations, from the most innocent trifling or the merest talk up to the highest intellectual achievements; but there is the accompanying boredom to be set against them on the side of suffering.
Boredom is a form of suffering unknown to brutes, at any rate in their natural state; it is only the very cleverest of them who show faint traces of it when they are domesticated; whereas in the case of man it has become a downright scourge.”
While harsh, what he meant by “brutes” are essentially people who live day by day life as though there’s no end, drowning in pleasures. This admission perfectly reflects our modern day version of it as well as we discussed it above with the encroachment of our devices.
As Seneca writes in "On Tranquility of Mind"Seneca the Younger (4 BC to 65AD) is a Roman Stoic philosopher known for his plays, essays and letters such as Letters On Ethics: To Lucilius.: “[T]heir mind becomes incensed against Fortune, and complains of the times, and retreats into corners and broods over its trouble until it becomes weary and sick of itself.
For it is the nature of the human mind to be active and prone to movement. Welcome to it is every opportunity for excitement and distraction.
Hence men undertake wide-ranging travel, and wander over remote shores, and their fickleness, always discontented with the present, gives proof of itself now on land and now on sea.
They undertake one journey after another and change spectacle for spectacle. They began to be sick of life and the world itself, and [think]: “How long shall I endure the same things?””
Seneca is talking about the restlessness that appears often with boredom. We imagine boredom to be a state of indifference but as it is pointed out above, it is rather a state of confusion.
It’s amazing how perfectly the condition of the human mind was described by Seneca. It seems that regardless of time, the human mind hasn’t changed, hence the same experiences even if it’s over two thousand years ago.