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.

On Slow Living with Mindfulness

The "slow living" movement started in the 1980s in Italy as a counter-reaction to the "fast life," and specifically to that uniquely American contribution to global cuisine: fast food. Although the focus still seems to be on food, the slow living movement has grown to encompass other areas of life, and it dovetails nicely with the practice of mindfulness, and specifically the mindfulness-based stress reduction developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Slow living is better than no living!

Slow living is a much-needed antidote to America's overemphasis of efficiency and productivity

Slow living is a much needed antidote to America's wild worship of efficiency and productivity. When we speak of a person's "net worth," we assess it in terms of dollars, instead of relationships and experiences. We look at multi-millionaire hedge-fund managers as examples of great success in Life, without stopping to ask whether they are on speaking terms with their children, or whether anything else in Life really matters when it's all said and done. We emphasize quantity over quality, and maybe because the quality is so poor, we feel like we're not really missing out on much when we do life at 100 miles per hour, with a lifetime of potential memories whizzing by too quickly to be savored. Slow living is a reminder that there is more to Life than business and making money, and we should question our assumptions about what counts as success in Life.

For many Americans (as well as for the British, the Japanese, etc.), each passing day means another deadline is drawing dreadfully closer. The typical worker is expected to get more done, in far less time, and for less pay (adjusted for inflation) than workers a generation ago. In most families, both parents are working full-time -- and even overtime -- out of necessity, leaving less time for housework and caring for children. Every day, the to-do list seems to get longer, and it can seem like the only way to catch up is to cram even more activities into our already overstuffed schedules. Even though studies have repeatedly shown that multitasking is a myth, we feel like we can't afford to take the time to do one thing at a time, so that we can do it mindfully and meaningfully.

The reality is that our culture is sick. We obsess so much over time, that the difference of a few minutes, or even a few seconds, can cause us to lose our tempers if we are running behind schedule. In all our haste, we miss out on Life's simple joys and pleasures. We defer our enjoyment for a tomorrow that may never come, and when we look back at the past, we see that despite all our frantic hustle and bustle, we never really arrived anywhere.

As Shakespeare put it in Macbeth, "Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour on stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing." If it was true in Shakepeare's day, it is all the more true in ours.

As a much-needed antidote to this American madness, Italy has given us the "slow living movement." This overlaps nicely with some of the concepts and insights, such as mindfulness, that American thinkers have imported from Asia's Buddhist cultures over the past few decades. Similarly, modern readers are beginning to rediscover the wisdom of ancient Greeks, such as the Stoics, Skeptics, and Epicureans, who advocated ataraxia, or freedom from worry and distress, as one of the highest goods in Life.

Slow eating...

I remember meeting some exchange students from the former Yugoslav republic, and I was intrigued by their response when I asked, "What would you say has been the biggest culture shock for you, when you think about the way Americans do things, versus the way things are done in your country?" They chuckled, thought for a minute, and then one of them replied, "The way Americans eat food."

I asked what he meant by that, and he said, "At home, a meal is a big event. We stop what we're doing, and everyone comes together to eat together and visit. It is a big social event for the day." He then added that the quality and freshness of the food was also much better and that people took the time to enjoy eating it. He contrasted this with American's attitude towards meals: we often eat alone, on the go, as quickly as possible, with our minds elsewhere, etc.

If we want to live more fully, a good place to start is with our meals. From the way meals are done in much of the world, I get the sense that fellowship and food go naturally together. There's something about eating food with family and friends that really does make the meal much better.

Also, if we eat more slowly and mindfully, we tend to eat less, but to enjoy what we eat much more. I have been as guilty as anyone of chowing down on a meal without really tasting the food or enjoying the experience. Then, I'm staring at an empty plate and feeling full, but dissatisfied. I may eat more than I should, not because I'm hungry, but because I feel like I will somehow enjoy my food if I eat more of it. But I don't. However, when I remember to take the time to savor each bite, to chew it slowly and really experience the flavors and textures of the food, I enjoy my food more and feel more content when my meal is done, and I'm less likely to overeat.

Of course, there's no reason to stop with reforming our approach to food. Slow living, in conjunction with mindfulness, is an approach to Life that brings great benefit in almost every area: relationships, aesthetic enjoyment, hobbies, and even our work. Since "multi-tasking" leads to distractedness and mistakes, we can often get more done, in the long run, by taking our time than by rushing things.

Video on Slow Living

[Embedded video from TED channel on YouTube: Carl Honore, "In Praise of Slowness."] 

Video on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

[Video embedded from Google's own channel on YouTube: Jon Kabat-Zinn leads Mindfulness Session at Google]

The choice between slow living and not living

When it's all said and done, the choice is not between slow living and fast living; the choice is between slow living and not really living at all.

Life is too short to burn our candles at both ends! And no amount of money can buy back the experiences we miss, if we race frantically through our days. I have wasted too much of my life already, chasing an illusory carrot or fleeing from an illusory stick.

The carrot is the promise of some future payoff: graduation, getting a "real job," getting married, having a family, getting the kids out of diapers, getting the kids through school, retirement, etc. Every time I crossed one finish line, I realize that the race was really far from over; in fact, it was really just getting started. The stakes were now even higher than before, since the next "finish line" was even more critical. So without being able to really enjoy reaching the last milestone, I found myself racing mindlessly towards the next finish line.

The stick consists of any of those imagined catastrophes that has ever kept me up at night: all the what-ifs that will become nightmarishly real if I don't keep running the rat-race with all my might and cunning. What if I don't get a scholarship? What if I get a bad score on this standardized test? What if I can't find a job? What if the car breaks down? What if, what if, what if?

And then there's the desire for distraction and staying busy, which can really come from a fear that my life is ultimately "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." (I think this is what lies at the root of "boredom.") If I stay busy enough and preoccupied enough, I won't have to consider that. I won't have to look into the empty vastness of what looks to be an existential vacuum. I won't have to face my responsibility to choose what my life will be or what it will mean.

But if I lose my life through chasing the carrot of some imagined future payoff, or in running away from some faceless anxiety, or in trying to paper over the biggest fear of all, that my life is ultimately meaningless, then my worst fear will be realized: my life will have been meaningless. As Jesus said, "what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose his soul?"

So I am going to be intentional about taking a more leisurely pace through Life. In addition to practicing mindfulness while I'm meditating, I will strive to practice mindfulness while walking, talking, eating, and working. After all, slow living is better than no living!

See also, slow living article on Wikipedia; WebMD article on why multi-tasking is a myth; and UMass biography of Jon Kabat-Zinn, founding executive director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Healthcare, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (with links to various mindfulness resources). Also, check out Welcome to Finding Meaning in Life for more about this blog and other posts about topics like "happiness" and "meaning."