Guest Post from Dr. Dennis Ortman: Boredom
BOREDOM
“Behold,
I am making all things new.”
--Revelations
21: 5
We often use slogans to guide us through life’s complexity.
I recently learned two slogans popular among young people today. YOLO: “You
only live once.” It proclaims that we have only this one precious and wild
life. So, we must make the most of it. This maxim reiterates the ancient wisdom,
“Life is short.” Take advantage of our allotted time. A second piece of
complimentary guidance is FOMO: “Fear of missing out.” There is a sense of
urgency to fill our brief time here with stimulating activities. We want to
cram as many experiences as possible in our available time. Only then can we
feel satisfied and happy.
We Americans assume that a fast-moving, active life is a
fulfilled life. “An idle mind is the workshop of the devil,” a time-honored epithet
reminds us. A boring life is a useless one. We want to do as much as we can as
quickly as we can. Our goal is to be productive and efficient. We confess laziness
as our deadliest sin.
Our attachment to frenetic activity and flight from boredom suggests
many questions, if we care to look more deeply into the matter. Time is both a
gift and burden. How do we use it? What makes being active more valuable than
being passive? Can boredom be beneficial? Are some activities more meaningful
than others for us? What actions lead to genuine and lasting joy?
BOREDOM
As a psychologist, I am privileged to be invited into the
inner worlds of my patients. They share with me their suffering and struggle to
find relief. Many of my depressed patients complain of lacking energy and
motivation. After probing more deeply, they admit that they feel bored with
life. “I feel so empty and dead inside. There is nothing that interests me or
makes me feel alive,” they lament. Time and the urgings of loved ones weigh
heavily on them, demanding that they do something, anything. But they prefer to
isolate and sleep. I suspect that boredom contributes to their depressed mood. Guilt
for not wanting to do anything haunts them.
The tendency to become bored and withdraw from life
possesses all of us to some degree, not just the depressed. Hindu philosophy,
based on an astute observation of human nature, describes this quality as
“tamas,” meaning darkness, inertia. Those with tamasic qualities live in
darkness, confusion, and ego-deflation. Their knowledge “clings to one thing as
if it were the whole and has no concern for the true cause or essence of
things.” (Bhagavad Gita, tr. Stephen
Mitchell, New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000, chap. 18: 19-39) Their action
“begins in delusion, with no concern that it may cause harm to oneself or
others.” “An agent is called tamasic when he is undisciplined, stupid,
stubborn, mean, deceitful, lazy, and easily depressed.” Their understanding is
“thickly covered in darkness and imagines that wrong is right and sees the
world upside down.” Their will “keeps clinging to grief and fear, to torpor,
depression, and conceit.” (18: 35) Their happiness “is self-deluding from
beginning to end, and arises from sleep, indolence, and dullness.”
Soren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth century Danish
philosopher, wrote, “Boredom is the root of all evil.” That boredom arises from
a frightening sense of emptiness and uncertainty. We bear a terrible burden of
freedom. We long for the infinite but must choose among limited options. How
do we decide? What will bring us happiness? It is as if we are floating in a
vast, bottomless ocean, teeming with unseen life. We fear drowning in the
depths. Kierkegaard observed that if boredom envelops us, we disengage from
life. We refuse to enter the depths and to choose. However, despite its
sedating nature, he also noted that boredom has a magical, energizing quality.
We naturally hate boredom, its lifelessness. So, we flee from it into its
opposite, energetic and passionate activity.
The bored avoid the depths. They float through life
aimlessly. However, Confucius note, “In the middle of chaos lies opportunity.”
PASSION
Many of my patients flee boredom and pursue hyperactive
lives. “I’m easily bored and can’t stand it. I have to keep busy and
distracted, or I’ll become restless and anxious,” they tell me. Some of these
patients suffer from attention deficit disorder, anxiety, or bipolar disorder,
but many simply cannot stand doing nothing, or being alone with themselves. Their
whims or momentary enthusiasms drive them. Our society encourages hyperactivity
to fill the void, as mentioned above. Often, however, our activities degenerate
into mindless and meaningless activities, such as spending hours surfing the
internet. We seek constantly to be entertained. I suspect that much of our
political and media drama arises from the public’s flight from boredom.
To some degree, we all let our impulses guide our actions.
The Hindus call this quality “ragas,” which means passion. We feel alive
pursuing our passionate interests. Those with ragasic qualities are energetic,
impulsive, pleasure-seeking, and ego-inflated. Their knowledge “perceives a
multiplicity of beings, each one existing by itself, separate from all others.”
Their action “is performed with a wish to satisfy desires, with the thought, ‘I
am doing this,’ and with excessive effort.” “A ragasic agent is impulsive,
seeks to obtain results, is greedy, violent, impure, and buffeted by joy and
sorrow.” His understanding “fails to know right from wrong, when from when not
to act, what should from what should not be done.” His will “is attached to
duty, sensual pleasures, power, and wealth, with anxiety and a constant desire
for results.” His happiness “comes from constant contact with the senses and
their objects, and is at first like nectar, but at last like poison.”
The passionate skim the surface. They race through life
without having a clear goal. Kierkegaard observed, “Most people rush past
pleasure so fast that they rush right past it.” Eventually, all the running
around becomes boring. I suspect that most of us, most of the time, bounce back
and forth between boredom and hyperactivity, between the tamasic and ragasic
states.
BALANCE
Many of my patients feel burnt-out from all their running
around. They cannot keep up with the demands of their schedules. They feel like
they are chasing their shadows, never finding peace. “Something has to change,
or it will kill me. I need some me-time. I have to find some work-life
balance,” they say. In therapy we examine what they are doing and why they are
doing it. Often, they feel driven by others’ agendas and have not established
their own personal priorities. Together we examine what they really want for
themselves. Instead of following blind impulses, they begin to let their freely
chosen values guide their lives.
Carl Jung, the renowned Swiss psychologist, described
neurosis as “one-sidedness.” We often live in the extremes of passivity or
activity, of ego-deflation or inflation. The mature achieve a sense of
wholeness and harmony in their lives. The Hindus describe the balanced
lifestyle as “sattva.” Those with sattvic qualities are wise, steadfast, serene,
and self-possessed. Their knowledge “sees in all things a single, imperishable
being, undivided among the divided.” Their behavior is “obligatory action,
performed without any craving or aversion by a man unattached to results.” They
are “an agent who is free from attachment and I-sense, courageous, steadfast,
unmoved by success or failure.” “The understanding that knows what to do and
what not to, safety and danger, bondage and liberation, is sattvic.” Their will
is “the unswerving will that controls the functions of mind, breath, senses by
the practice of meditation.” Their happiness “comes from long practice, which
leads to the end of suffering, which at first is like poison, but at last like
nectar—this kind of happiness arising from the serenity of one’s own mind.”
The balanced test the waters. They swim with the current towards
their consciously chosen destination. Over time, however, they sense something
missing in only pursuing their plans and projects.
CONTEMPLATION
We achieve a sense of mature balance and self-control by
using our rational minds. I invite my patients to become like scientists in
their daily living. I encourage them to pay close attention to their
experience, observing the flow of their thoughts, feelings, reactions, and
behaviors. They undertake experiments guided by their chosen values to see what
works best for them. For example, do their angry outbursts help or hurt them?
They entertain hypotheses about who they are and would like to be and engage in
experiments in truthful self-awareness. Am I really who I think I am?
Furthermore, I invite my patients to spend idle time with
themselves, to sit with themselves in silence and just listen to what arises
from their depths. In these times of contemplation, they let go of their
thinking and get in touch with their subtle intuitions. They quiet their
chattering minds and encounter their inner wisdom. I tell them, “You will come
to know your true self by going beyond your thoughts and attend to your
immediate experience.” I believe they encounter the Divine Spirit that dwells
within them and guides them in ways that sometimes defies logic. We come to
know what is true and the right thing for us to do in the moment.
Kierkegaard challenged the old adage, “An idle mind is the
workshop of the devil.” He insisted that we spend quiet time with ourselves to
become aware of our inwardness. He wrote, “Idleness as such is by no means a
root of evil; on the contrary, it is truly divine life, if one is not bored.”
Contemplatives plunge into the depths. They flow with the
Spirit in each moment. The Spirit makes all things new, in unexpected ways.
Life becomes a fascinating adventure if we delight in surprise.
TRANSITIONS
At every stage of life we encounter boredom, a sense of
emptiness and confusion. Each stage has a different sense of time. Transitional
moments invite us to look more deeply into what we truly desire. Working with
my patients, the following are some typical transition times in which the
challenge of an honest self-examination emerges:
Career Choice:
For the young, time is open-ended and boundless. I meet with
adolescent and young adult patients who are lost and confused about what they
want to do with their lives. Many tell me, “I just want to get rich and not
have to work hard.” I think to myself, “Good luck,” and feel sorry for them.
They are seduced by the cultural agenda of the masses. In therapy, I invite
them to follow their personal passion as the way to happiness and fulfillment.
At this stage in their lives, they are preoccupied with the questions of who
they are and where they want to go with their lives. As guidance for their
self-exploration, I suggest two questions: “What are you good at; what do you
enjoy doing?” The answer to these questions often reveals their unrecognized
passion.
Midlife Crisis:
In the first half of life, we generally follow the social
agenda in establishing a family, career, and home life. However, often around
the age forty, we begin to have a sense of our mortality. “There is more life
behind me than ahead of me; time is limited,” we tell ourselves. We then begin
an inner exploration and ask ourselves, “What is really most important to me?
What really lasts?”
Frequently, my patients question their career choices, which
were determined either by social expectation or the desire to please others.
They realize that they climbed the ladder of success, only to find it leaned
against the wrong wall. In fact, recent research indicates that only about half
of Americans report their job as very satisfying, enjoyable, and fulfilling. I
ask them, “What now do you really want to do? What is your dream for yourself?”
For example, a middle-aged patient achieved his career goal of
becoming partner at his law firm. He worked long hours to reach this milestone.
But he was not as happy as he imagined he would be. He had panic attacks, slept
poorly, and developed high blood pressure. He came to me and admitted, “I
really hate being a lawyer. My father was a judge and encouraged me to pursue a
law degree.” “What is your passion”? I asked. He responded, “I always wanted to
be a math teacher.” He was torn. Changing careers would mean giving up a lavish
lifestyle afforded by his success as an attorney. He was rich, but miserable,
because he ignored his passion.
Retirement:
As we age, time seems to pass more quickly. Patients come to
me as they near retirement. Many, especially men, have pursued a career track
and found their identity in their work. Entering this new stage in life, I ask,
“What are you retiring to?” Often, they have been so involved in work that they
have not seriously pursued any personal hobbies or interests. Our society’s
image of retirement is to be carefree, to have fun in the sun, to play all day.
It is a return to childhood.
I propose a different view of retirement. It is a new, more
mature stage in life. The elderly become elders, mentors for others. I tell
them about what we learn from studying those who live in the five blue zones
around the world. In these places, a large percentage of the population lives
happily beyond a hundred years old. Their number one recommendation is
surprising: “Never retire.” That means choosing to do some meaningful work that
motivates us to get up each day with enthusiasm. They further suggest, “Do
something that benefits others. Their joy will be yours.”
Old Age:
Some of my elderly patients are preoccupied daily with their
medical problems. They live on scan-time. They are constantly being monitored
for the return of cancer, their blood pressure, heart rate, potassium levels,
and so forth. They tell me, “All the names in my phone book begin with D—for
doctor.” Their schedules revolve around doctor visits. Their lives have
diminished yet are paradoxically full. They mourn the loss of many activities
that made them feel alive. However, better than anyone, they know that life is
short and time precious. Living on death’s doorstep, they sense the nearness of
eternity. Meeting together, we contemplate life’s final transition. The giving
up of their treasured activities prepares them for the final total surrender of
their lives. “Into your hands I commend my spirit,” their final prayer. That is
the ultimate sacrifice for which their whole lives have been a rehearsal.
Boredom, emptiness, and despair loom in the shadows of even
the most fulfilled life. In fact, the brighter our life’s light is, the darker
the shadow. The inescapable boredom can paralyze us, provoke erratic behavior,
or stimulate meaningful action. As our time unfolds, we need constant vigilance
that we can remain true to ourselves and pursue what quickens our spirit. Our
lasting joy will come by lovingly sharing our gifts for the benefit of others.
For more posts about Dennis and his award-winning books, click HERE.
Anger Anonymous
Anxiety Anonymous
Being Catholic in Troubled Times
Depression Anonymous
Hope and the Pandemic
Life, Liberty, and COVID-19
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