I’m bored. So very bored. A profound existential boredom that’s corroding my very soul. The monotony, the routine, the grey calendar of existence, the blah blah blah more boring words, BORED!I’d like to share a quote - taken from The Dice Man - that captures exactly how I feel:
Life is islands of ecstasy in an ocean of ennui, and after the age of thirty land is seldom seen. At best we wander from one much-worn sandbar to the next, soon familiar with each grain of sand we see.
I’m drowning in an ocean of ennui. And the closest I’ve come to a cure is HBO. Yes, Home Box Office, the American cable network. HBO offers some of the highest quality escapism there is. The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Boardwalk Empire, Band Of Brothers – in other words some of the best TV ever made. All wonderful, all offering momentary respite from the grinding reality of life. But once you’re done watching The Pacific DVD boxset, what then?
What other brightly coloured baubles are there to distract us from our slow inevitable slide into the grave? Books, movies, sex, food, videogames, holidays, porn, booze, music, clubs, work, facebook, youtube, twitter, blogs, stupid pointless blogs that no fucker wants to read, especially when that blog pisses and moans about what is possibly the most boring subject known to man: BOREDOM.
Maddening circularity. Familiarity that breeds contempt. Knowing too, that others have articulated this age old battle with boredom better than I ever could - Nietzsche, Camus, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, to name a few. The helpless realisation that the more you learn, the more aware you are of your own ignorance, and the equally sickening epiphany that life is simply too short to do much about it, to even scratch the surface.
Knowing that there’ll always be someone better than you, no matter how hard you try, no matter how much you sweat and toil and fret over a personal undertaking, there’ll always be someone who’ll undermine your effort.
And secretly, perversely, enjoying the fucked-up pointlessness of it all. The helpless frustration, the ridiculous unbearable boredom. Somehow there’s a freedom in it.
And that is why I am lost.
I once took a moral philosophy class in college. The instructor was a man from Ethiopia, and one of his favored refrains was to refer to human beings as "moral garbage."
ReplyDeleteOne day, towards the end of the class, he asked if anyone in the room was really bored with life.
I was the only person to raise my hand.
I've felt embarrassed about that admittedly honest answer ever since, because I realize how narcissistic it is. To be bored is to be disengaged, and that's our own faults if it's true.
There's plenty to do. If our time is so worthless, we can volunteer it to people in need and make it worth something. There's friends to make, loves to find, and a whole world to explore.
I suspect that boredom is a lack of willingness to put some effort into occupying ourselves. I used to be bored. Now I'm married, have three cats, work a day job, and write video game journalism in my spare time.
I don't have time to be bored anymore, and I'm much happier for it. A little more stressed, but not much more than when I was miserable for being bored. :)
Hey Dennis, thanks for leaving a comment.
ReplyDeleteI hear ya loud and clear bro. I understand that, as an adult, it's entirely down to me to keep myself amused. Mewling and whining like a needy child is, well, childish.
But sometimes, no matter where I may be, boredom finds me. And when it strikes, it tears a hole in the fabric of reality. Everything is revealed as absurd. It's really quite exhilarating. Not to mention terrifying.
Thing is, once you've seen the world for what it is - godless, meaningless, wonderfully pointless - it's hard to take anything too seriously. Even bordeom.