I recently had a discussion with someone about boredom. This person recounted details about their life, saying that they filled their schedules with various activities, all in avoidance of boredom. Essentially, that was the gist of the conversation.
They went on to say that many of the activities were not enjoyable and that much of the time, they were with individuals who were not engaging. All in avoidance of being bored or left with nothing to do.
All of this made me wonder about boredom.
As I look back on my own life, I cannot ever remember being bored. Sure. There were many times when I would rather have been doing something else. Like having to sit through fourth-grade math class. Or these days, attending some meeting or fundraising event. But in any of those cases, I wasn’t bored. I just wanted to be somewhere else.
So what is it, exactly? This boredom thing.
As defined by Webster, boredom is this: Feeling weary because one is unoccupied or lacks interest in one’s current activity.
Well. Whoops. Maybe I have been bored. Because there have been a lot of times when I lacked interest in what I was doing.
But here is the thing. At those times, I’m not like, “Ho hum. There’s nothing to do here.” I’m more like, “Holy Heck. I have to get out of here. I need an escape route. Okay. No escaping. I just have to find a way to suffer through this thing.” It feels less like boredom to me and more like sheer terror.
It made me think about other people and what others experience.
So my question is this: Do you get bored?
And my other question is: Does dissatisfaction with being in a certain situation classify as boredom?
What do you think?
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“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” – Dorothy Parker
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“There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.” – G.K. Chesterton
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“Boredom is the silent despair of not knowing what to do with oneself.” – Eric Hoffer
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Bored out of your gourd? Or not so much?
