![]() ![]() “Boredom is such a fascinating topic, with tentacles that spread into philosophy, anthropology, literature, religion, theology,” says Eastwood, who is head of the Boredom Lab at York University in Toronto. ‘Boredom is neither daydreaming, which we might find highly absorbing, nor, necessarily, vegging out on the sofa.’ Illustration: Serge Seidlitz/The Observer His characterisation of boredom as a frustrated hunger (“I’m just about starving tonight”) evokes Tolstoy’s definition in Anna Karenina of the feeling as “the desire for desires”. Lady Dedlock complains of being “bored to death” of herself, more than a century before Bruce Springsteen would express the same restless dissatisfaction in Dancing in the Dark. And though one could already be “a bore”, it was Dickens who was the first to term it “boredom” – in Bleak House in 1852. Is there no end?” In the Middle Ages monks complained of “the noonday demon”: the personification of acedia – torpor, alongside agitation – provoked by the constraints and repetition of their daily lives. ![]() To quote from Boredom: A Lively History, by the classicist Peter Toohey, the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote in disgust: “How long the same things? Surely I will yawn, I will sleep, I will eat, I will be thirsty, I will be cold, I will be hot. I find it a very frustrating, agitating experience.” “As a kid, and still into my adult years, I experience boredom, and whenever I do, I hate it. He began studying boredom 15 years ago, a case of “physician, heal thyself,” he says. They say it communicates an important message that – in trying to outrun it my entire life – I had been refusing to heed.ĭanckert is an Australian cognitive neuroscientist now based at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. But do you want to totally eliminate it? I don’t think you do.”ĭanckert and Eastwood contend that boredom can steer us towards realising our potential and living full, meaningful lives. “I think that’s a good thing, in a lot of ways. It signals that we are unengaged, in need of an activity to satisfy us. Boredom evolved to help us, says Danckert. Their research has revealed boredom to be widely misunderstood, perhaps even unfairly maligned. Most of us are poorly equipped to cope with being shut in our homes indefinitely, even with the internet to distract us.īut we should not fear being bored, say psychologists James Danckert and John D Eastwood, the authors of Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom. Indeed, the coronavirus pandemic has been described as a “boom time for boredom”. It is a familiar feeling and very common. ‘Studies show boredom levels rise through childhood, peak in early adulthood, and then decline again.’ Illustration: Serge Seidlitz/The Observer So I cannot tell you how long I had been happily at work on that hole when mum finally returned to the car to find the back seat, and both of her children, coated with foam. The inverse is also true: when we are highly engaged in what we are doing, we lose track. One of the defining characteristics of boredom is that time seems to drag – minutes pass as hours. Then my gaze landed on a small hole in the velour lining of the car roof. Neither the car radio nor my baby sister offered any relief. This was boredom, and I was appalled by it. I felt the bind on a physical level, the confines of the car consistent with the constraints on me. I could do nothing but wait, but I wanted, strongly, to do anything else. My sister and I were sitting in our family car, parked outside Mum’s friend’s house, into which she had disappeared. Actually, my mother tells me, I was only three or four, which makes being bored my earliest memory. The recollection is so clear I thought I must have been at least seven years old. I remember my first experience of boredom as vividly as my first kiss. ![]()
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