How to Cure Boredom in Life

Like death and taxes, boredom seems to be a fact of life in the modern world. People are willing to pay big bucks for amusement and distractions, no matter how fleeting and insubstantial they might be. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, television, shopping, politics, making money, spending money: all of it seems to be a desperate attempt to cure boredom in life.

How to Cure Boredom in Life?

Boredom in Life: The Problem

Sometimes I wonder about myself. For much of my life, I have either been busy and stressed out by some looming project or deadline, or I have been bored and sick and tired of everything, including myself. In times of busyness and stress, I have longed for free time to pursue personal interests or to indulge idle curiosity; but then when I've had the free time to do those things, they feel empty and unrewarding. When looking back and reflecting on this pattern, I wonder, am I just trying to stay busy, so that I don't have to deal with boredom?

It's a terrible way to live: longing for free time, but unable to enjoy it when it comes; alternating between workweeks of busyness and burnout, on the one hand, and fleeting breaks of boredom and depression, on the other. 

Living in that way is analogous to a humorous story told by Woody Allen at the beginning of Annie Hall. Two old women are eating lunch in the cafeteria of a nursing home. One says to the other, "The food here is really terrible. The taste of it makes me want to throw up." The other woman nods and replies, "I know. And they give you such small portions, too." In his analysis of that joke, Woody Allen said that their exchange highlights the way most of us feel about Life: so much of it is unpleasant and painful, yet we feel like it passes by much too quickly.

Boredom in Life: Possible Root Causes

Two things have struck me when I've thought about how to cure boredom in Life. First, primitive people don't appear to be afflicted by boredom, the way we moderns do. Second, while boredom craves distraction, boredom also seems to arise out of distraction in the first place. 

A few weeks ago, my wife and I were talking about problems with the education system in the United States. My wife has been in education at the secondary and collegiate levels for much of her career, and she has strong feelings about the inequality of opportunity that exists for poor and minority students. I can't recall the specifics of the conversation, but at some point, I felt like a light bulb went off for me. I asked her what goods are required for someone to have access to the "good life." She listed off several things that sound unquestionably good, and which are certainly necessary for any meaningful opportunity to thrive in the modern economy, such as literacy, access to technology, etc. I then asked, which of those goods do the Bushmen of the Kalahari enjoy? The answer, of course, was none of them.

Obviously, the Bushmen inhabit a very different world than we do, with different challenges and requiring different skills and knowledge in order to thrive. I am in no way suggesting that we base our education system off what works in a tribal hunter-gatherer society. But what is interesting is that the Bushmen seem to be happy and well-adjusted to life, even though they lack almost all of the things that we would consider necessary for having a good life.

From what (little) I have read about them, aboriginal hunter-gatherers spend most of their time doing nothing, yet they do not appear to be bored or even to have a concept of "boredom" or a word for it. True, there are major differences between the way hunter-gatherers "work" and the way most modern humans work (see, Play Makes Us Human V: Why Hunter-Gatherers' Work is Play from www.PsychologyToday.com); however, that would only explain why they do not get bored while hunting and gathering; it would not explain how they can sit around and do nothing for much of their lives without getting bored, the way most modern people would be bored by even 5 minutes of doing nothing.

I think the most important difference between aboriginal hunter-gatherers and modern Americans is in our social groups. As an American in the 21st Century, I live in a lower-middle-class suburb where I know a handful of my neighbors by name, but I would not consider any of them to be friends, or even close acquaintances. I was born in one state, raised in another, and currently live in yet another. I have only one member of my immediate family who lives within 100 miles of me; the others are spread out across the country. I have childhood friends that I still stay in touch with, but they all live in different states as well. I work with people with whom I get along reasonably well and can have pleasant conversations, but I would not consider any of my coworkers friends. Now compare this to the typical Bushman, who lives among the same immediate family and close friends his entire life.

For the typical Bushman, it would never occur to him to "prove himself" to anyone. Why would he need to do that? What would "proving himself" even mean? His fellow tribesmen would all know him intimately, and he would know them intimately. Their first impressions of each other would have been formed in infancy and long since forgotten. The ability to impress people with your small talk wouldn't mean anything: who would you be trying to impress, and why would you need to impress them?

To be sure, life as a Bushman would be no picnic. You would have illnesses and injuries without modern pain killers. No indoor plumbing, no soft beds to sleep in, no air conditioning in the sweltering hot summer nights.

But you would also never feel lonely or insecure about your standing in the social group. Whenever tragedy struck, you would not face it alone; you would face it in common with all your family and friends. You would never move to a new city where you didn't know anyone or face the pressure of interviewing for a job with a panel of complete strangers. You would never feel pressured to "make something" of yourself or figure out what you want to be when you grow up.

For 21st Century Americans, this is a bigger psychological problem than I think we like to admit, and one that particularly plagues introverts. As Susan Caine describes in her excellent book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, we have developed a "personality ethic" in America, where we tend to admire and seek to be like the smooth-talking and charming man of action, who can sail through a job interview with ease, navigate the office politics with aplomb, get himself noticed and admired by all the right people, and win opportunities and resources because key decision makers are mesmerized by his infectious charisma and self-confidence. That's because we live in a society where no one really knows anyone else and where social and economic arrangements are constantly changing, so that if we want to get a job or seize a new opportunity, it usually involves proving ourselves all over again to a completely new set of strangers. We are never really secure, because no matter how many times we have proven ourselves to others, it is never enough.

For an insecure 21st Century American, if you are not actively running the rat race, then you are not going to outpace your feelings of insecurity. Whenever you take a break or a holiday, there it is: a faceless, formless feeling of dread and uncertainty, a sense of heaviness and self-doubt, a nagging thought that you should be doing something, anything, to establish yourself a little more firmly, to prove yourself a little more convincingly, and thereby give yourself a little more solid footing in the game of life. That restlessness tells you that you should be doing something, even if you don't appear to have anything really to do. Resting contentedly is not an option, since you are not really secure; so you must find something to do to either prove yourself or to distract yourself from the feeling of insecurity.

And that leads me to my next observation: I find that when I am bored, I crave distraction. Yet it is this pervasive distractedness that causes me to feel bored in the first place. Instead of being able to just be myself in the present moment, I feel like I need to be doing something to prove myself, but the desire to prove myself causes me to be discontent with myself and to desire to make myself into someone else or to distract myself from who I really am. Alienated from myself, I am unable to be content, and any free time forces me to face this fact about myself. I have tried for so long to prove myself and figure out who I should be, that I really don't know who I actually am.

To borrow a term from Buddhism, I am experiencing dukkha. Distress, dis-ease, discontentment. I have an empty sense of self that demands to be fed like a hungry child, a self that tries to define itself through attachments to people, places, and things, and which clings to those attachments like a drowning man holds onto a life preserver. When it's just me, with nothing to do and nowhere to be, I feel like the drowning man who lost hold of a life preserver; emotionally I thrash about, desperately trying to find something solid to grab hold of. I feel bored, restless, uneasy, hungry for some sort of distraction or some project to do to stay busy.

Boredom seems to arise, then, from these two things: alienation from my true self, and alienation from true relationships with others. Boredom seems to be a defense mechanism to keep me busy and distracted, so I don't have to experience despair.

How to Cure Boredom in Life

So how to cure boredom in Life, now that I have identified its apparent causes? The first and simplest thing to do is to face the present moment, rather than flee from it. The best tool I have found for this has been (drum roll, please) . . .  mindfulness. Yeah, yeah, I know it's trendy these days and starting to sound cliched, but it does seem to work.

Mindfulness if often touted as the panacea for modern malaise, and this may be why it seems cliched sometimes. We don't want to deal with the underlying problems of modern life, like the crazy frenetic pace of life and the endless to-do lists; so instead of changing our lives and slowing down, we try to use mindfulness as a tool to help us become the supermen we've always wanted to be: I can now be the affable extrovert with an active social life; the tireless and boundlessly enthusiastic office worker who outshines all his peers; the always-present and emotionally sensitive family man, who plays freely with his children and romances his wife; and the well-rounded and cultured man of the world who travels to fun destinations and enjoys art museums and theater. And what enables me to keep up this fantastic to-do list and be the modern renaissance man who is great at everything? My mindfulness sessions . . . Yeah right. I know television and movies make it look that easy, but in the real world, being mindful means making choices and valuing some things more highly than others, not being everyone and doing everything with a superhuman Zen-like serenity.

For me, mindfulness has helped me become more aware of who I am and who I am not. It has helped me admit to myself why I want to do certain things or why I feel like I should value some things, even when deep down, I really don't want to do them and don't really think they are all that important. Mindfulness has helped me simplify, simplify, simplify. Cut through all the mental clutter and chaos and see myself for who I actually am.

Mindfulness seems to be pretty simple. Anchor your awareness on your breath. Give an open-heart and an open-mind to the present moment, and be alert to your feelings, thoughts, and sensations, without being attached to them. Most books and seminars on mindfulness are pretty basic; once you've gotten a little bit of practice, it seems the most effective thing to do is simply to do it, rather than trying to learn more about it. For me, a great starting place was two books: Coming to Our Senses, by Jon Kabat-Zinn, and The Miracle of Mindfulness, by Thich Nhat Hanh.  

As for the other root cause of boredom, i.e., the unhealthy social dynamics of modern life, dealing with that has been more challenging. I am trying (this is very much an ongoing process) to be more present and attentive (more mindful) in my interactions with my immediate family, and I know I need to make the time and space to have more frequent and more meaningful interactions with them.

Friendship is vitally important, but it can be very challenging, since (as C. S. Lewis noted in The Four Loves), it requires the soil of familiarity in which to take root. It can be hard as a working adult with young children to have time to devote to pastimes in which I am likely to spend significant time with potential friends.

Moreover, most acquaintanceships fail to make the leap to friendship, because the relationship lacks depth. For me, it is hard to find people with whom I can discuss, not only events, but the meaning of those events. If I visit my childhood friends, they can tell me about recent events in their lives, with people and in settings that I do not share, and yet our conversation about those things will be meaningful. On the other hand, I have co-workers with whom I have an ongoing shared context, but there is no way to go deeper than small-talk with them about our shared experiences. If I were to go to a different job and run into one of them ten years later, after exchanging initial pleasantries, we would have almost nothing to say to each other.

I have come to see how rare it is to find people with whom I can share deep and meaningful connections, and so I have belatedly learned how important my friendships are, and have been, with my childhood friends.

In the meantime, though, I can make it more of a priority to stay in touch with those friends I do have. And, as I stated earlier, I can make it more of a priority to make meaningful time to spend with my children and immediate family. Most of all, when I am with family and friends, I can make sure that I am really present with them, not distracted by thoughts of what happened earlier or of what I hope will happen later. And for that, of course, the practice of mindfulness is deeply beneficial.

So how to cure boredom in life? For me, the best tools have been (1) practicing mindfulness and (2) focusing on prioritizing and being meaningfully present for my relationships with family and friends.

To Accept the Things I Cannot Change...

Should we accept those things that we cannot change, but try to change everything else? I wonder if the Serenity Prayer is too narrow in delineating the things that we should accept in Life, and too broad in prescribing what we should change.

"To accept the things I cannot change..."

If you've had any experience with recovery groups or twelve-step programs -- or even if you haven't -- chances are that you know the Serenity Prayer by heart. Attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr, who began using the prayer in his sermons in the 1930s, the Serenity Prayer goes like this:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The Courage to change the things I can,

And the Wisdom to know the difference.

The Serenity Prayer certainly can be very helpful as a mantra and as a continual, much-needed reminder that we are limited in our powers to change the world around us. It certainly is helpful to recognize when something truly cannot be changed, so that you do not waste time and energy trying to change it anyway. And if you find yourself frustrated, sad, or angry about the things that truly cannot be changed, then you are wise to go to work trying to change yourself and your response to those things instead.

Also, it takes Wisdom to recognize the distinction --sometimes a fine and nuanced distinction -- between what you can change and what you can't. You may not be able to change the fact that it's raining, but you can change the fact that you're getting wet by going inside, using an umbrella, or wearing a water-proof poncho.

And, of course, you often need courage to make real changes in your Life. Some changes are relatively simple and straightforward and affect only you, but there are other changes that require you to challenge the expectations that others have of you. If you've habitually had a particular role in relation to someone else, then that other person probably expects you to keep on fulfilling that role, even if you are being harmed by it. Your changes will often make others uncomfortable, and their discomfort can cause them to act angrily towards you. When someone else is making unreasonable demands of you or is actively trying to undermine your efforts to change, you will probably need courage to maintain your resolve and follow through on your plans, especially if your plans involve major Life changes.

So in light of these basic principles about Life and relationships, the Serenity Prayer contains some valuable insight and guidance. However, I wonder if it is actually too narrow.

Should one accept only the things that one cannot change, or should one accept more than that? There are things that we need to change, and that we actually can change, so we should certainly change those things. However, we are rarely confronted with choices that are so clear-cut and self-evident: in real Life, each possible course of action will have very real costs and benefits, and those costs may be borne unfairly by others. Sure, I may have the capacity to change something that would yield a small reward to me, but which would also impose a relatively large cost to someone else, or even to myself, in the long run. Should I change something just because I can?

I feel like the Serenity Prayer can encourage me to be too self-centered. This prayer may reflect a much-needed shift in focus for someone who is terribly co-dependent or overly fatalistic and scared of leaving a bad situation. However, there seems to be a "Golden Mean" (as in ancient Greek philosophy) between being too self-sacrificing and being too self-centered. Maybe something like a "Utilitarian Calculus" is needed to weigh the costs and benefits, to oneself and to others, of potential changes and of the status quo.

The Serenity Prayer assumes a good Will in order to work properly. A person with a bad Will could use it as an excuses or justification to do wrong, as with pretty much everything else. (I guess Immanuel Kant was right that the only truly good thing is a good Will.) Perhaps the prayer should say, "God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things that I cannot, in good conscience, change..."

The Serenity Prayer also assumes sound judgment about cause-and-effect and genuine self-awareness. One lesson that I have been too slow to learn in Life is that my circumstances are not always the problem. In a series of different circumstances, I find that things begin well, but that after some time, I wind up feeling frustrated and resentful. I can always find seemingly legitimate complaints to make about my present circumstances, and changing those circumstances seems like an effective way of dealing with those complaints. But if I stop and ask myself honestly, what is the one constant in all those changing circumstances, what do they all have in common, I could see the answer by looking in the mirror: it's me! I am the problem! Maybe my efforts to change my circumstances would be more fruitful if I first make some much-needed changes in myself: if I confront my feelings of entitlement, ingratitude, selfishness, etc.

I'm reminded of the (true) story of a British periodical asking its readers to submit their responses to the question, "What's wrong with the World?" G.K. Chesterton's response was succinct and to the point: "I am."

Of course, that's something else that we cannot completely change: ourselves. Mature self-acceptance seems to involve admitting to ourselves that we are merely human: imperfect, fallible creatures, who have all kinds of cognitive biases, imperfect perceptions, inaccurate memories, and unpredictable emotions. We can do our best to mitigate those imperfections, but we cannot remove them all.

So maybe the Serenity Prayer should also say, "God, grant me the Serenity to accept myself."

In the end, I do ask God to give me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, as well as some other things, like:

• Those things that I am trying to change, but the changes are taking a lot longer than I'd expected;
• Those things that I am trying to change, but it is a process of trial and error, with more mistakes than successes;
• Those things that I can change, and that I should have changed a long time ago (I need the Serenity to accept what I cannot change about the Past);
• Those things that I can change, but the opportunity cost would be prohibitive (i.e., I would be wise to expend my time and resources changing other things first, or I would be wise to accept things as they are, for the sake of some greater good); and
• Those things that I want to change now, but I have not yet completed the preparations that I need to take care of first (i.e., changing now would mean poor timing or trying to short-change the process). 

So although I do need the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, I also need Serenity to accept other things that I probably can change, but shouldn't, at least right now. And, of course, I also need the wisdom and honesty to recognize when not changing, or delaying change, is warranted, and when I'm just making excuses. (But that's a whole other topic...)