05/13/2024

Boredom Makes Us Human

The feeling makes us ponder existence itself

In a recent article in the Financial Times, Markham Heid shares with us a peculiar life crisis. At 41, he has built what many would regard as the good life: he has a family; he is healthy, productive and creative; he has time to travel, read, exercise and see friends. Yet, he feels that “something is off.” He gives this state a variety of names, including mid-life melancholy, ennui and despair.

He also diagnoses it in others all around him. To fight against it, some of his friends have turned to ayahuasca retreats, others to fitness. What renders Heid’s malaise somewhat strange is that it does not seem to arise from anything specific. If Heid had lost his job, had no time for himself or was struggling in his marriage, some of these feelings would seem less puzzling. 

In the history of philosophy, there have been many attempts to understand such powerful but objectless feelings. Boredom, anxiety and despair are some of the descriptions these moods have received. In the novel Nausea, the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre describes someone who mysteriously experiences that feeling whenever they are confronted with ordinary objects, like a pebble on the beach. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger describes an uncanny unease we may feel when we are bored and searching desperately for distractions. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard speaks of a silent despair in the background of our lives, a sense of discord or dread of an unknown something that can grab us momentarily.

Please select this link to read the complete article from TIME.