“May you live in interesting times.” — a Chinese curse
So we’ve all been cursed this year. No matter what our lifestyle or our attitude to lockdowns and restrictions, most of our lives are severely restricted. Travel is limited or non-existent; people don’t take time off work. Weekend brunches are a vivid memory, like parties, concerts, and almost everything we used to call normal life. What free time there is, we often spend online or watching TV — unless that’s become boring too. There was a time in the spring when we were excited to have a Zoom party with friends, but that’s lost its novelty. It’s just an extra hour adding to a phenomenon we’ve had the pleasure of discovering together: Zoom fatigue.
Boredom has set in, and it’s only the beginning of winter 2020 — the winter of the virus. And not the ordinary boredom — those hours waiting at the airport, the family party that stretches a bit long, the traffic. It’s months of deprivation of our need for novelty. Fun ideas are depleted, and retail therapy has gotten too frequent to be guilt-free. Notice that boredom does not imply idleness; we may have more work than ever and yet struggle with apathy.
In all conceivable directions, boredom stretches to the horizon. Take weekend walks, for example. Many people in my native Czech Republic have now explored the local fields and forests, ultimately realising there was a good reason they hadn’t been doing it earlier. Often, we choose the more boring spots on purpose, because they are less crowded. On Sunday evening, Instagram feeds fill with pictures of fields and forests.
A bit boring, right? Let’s admit it.
Enter second-order boredom. Not only is the weekend walk a little boring, but Instagram gets boring too. As our activities become boring, our conversations get boring as well. Our relationships, thoughts, and memories. Our writing. Look: we even read about boredom. The constriction of global experience ripples into the (much larger) metasphere of processed experience and information. We’re not individually, but collectively, bored. In that metasphere, we create artifacts of boredom — the Instagram feeds, memories, conversations — which are themselves boring.
This is where this post could end, to prove its own point. But… let’s listen to that little nagging voice of human creativity. That feeble sound that takes a while to notice. Is there anything left to do here?
First, we can step back and observe the macro impacts. They are as fascinating as any other catastrophe. Boredom propagates through society as a new kind of negative network effect. Some social media and dating apps are getting hit as hard as airlines, as their users collectively stop having fun. Just as with airlines, it does not matter that the cause is temporary. Some companies may go bust before the period of boredom ends, with consequences on the whole sector. This is what the macro view shows us: second-order boredom is the network effect of personal boredom.
And we can head in the opposite direction and dive into the micro, the personal. Into our own struggle with boredom. Let’s admit, boredom is underrated. It’s good for children; it helps us become more interesting and productive. It is the seed from which a tall tree grows. But how do we make that mental U-turn to start appreciating the tedium? Viktor Frankl’s simple and powerful recounting of Holocaust survival comes to mind — not to compare a long stretch of boredom to the horrors of the Holocaust, but to gratefully take advantage of his hardest-earned perspective.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
“When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.
“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
As I observed the growing meta-boredom for the past months, here are a few directions I found myself exploring:
- Noticing the beauty in those fields and forests. I said they were boring. But still, over time, my wife and I started discussing the unusually bright fall colors of this year. Is ordinary nature perhaps feeling the attention it’s receiving this year? Or are my neurons discerning finer details, as I pay more attention to the more mundane landscapes? Either way, it’s been a steadily evolving process of increasing appreciation for pleasure in simplicity, and observation of that process.
- Going deeper. Intensive over extensive. Internal vs. external. In theory, each simple day in one’s own backyard can be filled with the same amount of enjoyment and observation as a day in an exotic country. The infinite depth of the human psyche allows for that.
- What do meditation, 10-day Vipassana retreats, darkness therapy (staying in a small, pitch-dark room for a full week), and a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela have in common? Slowing down into boredom, and a patient observation of what appears on the other side. Also, they are all good for the soul.
- More structure. Morning ice baths, evening meditation, eating healthy food. There is more time for these rituals. The fact that they help build general discipline means they have a compounding effect on resilience. Each habit reinforces the others and makes them easier.
- Groundhog Day: keep living that simple day until it’s good. A good day starts with energy and ends with satisfaction.
- Groundwork. In this minimized life, every deep problem in our relationships (to self and others) gets surfaced again and again. They must be solved, one way or the other. That is hard, but incredibly valuable work, whose benefits will last for years to come. That’s why, with a bit of effort, boredom and resilience belong squarely among the topics of the 10-year Horizon.
And this positive, potential side of personal boredom surely must have it’s second order effects too. If you look around, you should see it as a shared resiliency, a sort of herd-immunity against adversity. Perhaps there are conversations and posts about vulnerable simplicity that empower. Or feelings of a shared burden, countries pulling together and learning to persevere. These won’t be the dominant news. But the positive network effect still exists in the background. It supports and inspires, and will enable new startups and fresh adventures. Do you notice these positive network effects of boredom? I’m curious to read about them in the comments.
