A psychologist told me recently (a personal friend, not a paid professional, not that there's anything wrong with that) that boredom is an expression of anxiety. I never thought about that before, but I think it makes sense. There's so much to do in the world that it makes one wonder why boredom exists. If it is just that we are expressing anxiety about something by being paralyzed by indecisiveness, then I think the picture becomes more clear.I want to die when I am bored, unable to think in the way I want to think, and unable to do things that I want to do.
I've heard this argument before, but it always seemed to me to be kinda misleading. Like, obviously there's a bunch of stuff to do in the world, but when you look at the number of things that it's possible for one to do in a particular moment, with limited financial resources, limited time, and all sorts of other constraints, I think it's totally possible to be bored in the classical sense -- simply because there's nothing to do. On the other hand, boredom can also be an expression of dissatisfaction, i.e. when one is in the middle of doing something unpleasant (or "boring") but "has to" (quotation marks indicate radical freedom, "has to" here really means something closer to "feels obligated to") keep doing said thing. At that point one can definitely become bored with the task and wish to be able to do something else. And I guess that's sort of the same point: I think boredom arises when the number of things one can do is constrained past a certain threshold. So I think it's also misleading to construe all boredom as related to indecision.There's so much to do in the world that it makes one wonder why boredom exists.
That's really interesting. I can't remember the last time I was genuinely bored. I remember being bored as a kid and whining at my mother. There may have been a couple Saturdays in high school? I worked all weekend but maybe after work when I was exhausted from work and none of my friends were doing anything / doing anything I wanted to do? I can't remember. Today, especially since there's so much on our phones, I'm not even bored waiting at the doctors office. It's like "sweet! I got a good 20 minutes where I can nothing but read hubski!" I can't even imagine a circumstance where I would be so caught up on everything I need to do AND want to do that I would end up bored.