It is odd to find boredom so prevalent a condition in an affluent time and culture.
In spite of the beauty and diversity of God's creation, and in spite of the tragic brokenness surrounding us, many whom we meet are bored with life.
In Patricia Spack's fascinating book, Boredom: a literary history of a state of mind, she finds the word was first used in English in the 18th century and there has been an increasing preoccupation with it in literature.
To bore is to weary by being dull, uninterested, monotonous, drab, colourless, apathetic, insipid, mundane, repetitious, routine, stale, tedious. Prior to the 18th century, theologians tended to speak of 'sloth' rather than boredom; an intellectual and spiritual indifference. Monks sometimes referred to it as 'the noonday demon'. And sloth was considered one of the seven deadly sins by medieval scholars.
There is a cycle in motion here: you are indifferent because you are bored, and because you are bored you grow indifferent. It is a dangerous cycle of insufficient engagement with the reality of life's obligations and possibilities. But boredom is not the same as sluggishness - one might be very busy and bustling while at the same time withering inwardly and growing ever more superficial.
Two kinds of boredom
There seems to be two forms of today's boredom: one is temporary, while the other is more ongoing and settled. The temporary form is what we all experience when talking with someone at a party who only speaks of themselves, or in a tedious sermon, or during a long afternoon meeting. This form is easily remedied by moving on to something of interest.
The longer-term form of boredom, however, settles into one's life and becomes a vapour carried with us, regardless of the current activity; a lens through which everything is viewed, until nothing is interesting. Life begins to annoy and irritate such a person. Life appears futile and purposeless.
Intriguingly, some people delight in boredom. This is because it staves off anxiety; it becomes a way of dealing with the frustrations of life. We live in the tension between desires and expectations. Nothing ever lives up to our imaginations of it; nothing ever delivers fully on its promises - and in our media-soaked age, we are wrestling with a huge industry built upon making us these promises unbidden and with scientific accuracy. Our state of over-stimulation leaves us chronically frustrated and disappointed. And rather than face this frustration, we may opt to retreat from it into long-term boredom.
Reasons for increase
If mention of boredom begins in the 18th century, it multiplies astonishingly in the 20th.
There are a number of possible reasons for this increase in boredom. In a sermon of 1765, the preacher asserted: 'There is not, methinks, anything more contemptible or more to be pitied than that turn of mind which finds no entertainment in itself, none at home, none in books, none in rational conversation, nor in the intercourses of real friendship.' People today do not view themselves as contemptible or pitiable when they are bored - it is their circumstances which are rotten. There has been a move from feeling oneself responsible to blaming the world.
A second reason for the emergence might be the 18th century's new concept of the right to happiness, a right to self-fulfilment. It was Schopenhauer who said: 'The chief foes of happiness are boredom and pain.' Our century demands: 'Entertain me!'
A third explanation of the expansion of boredom is the expansion of our leisure time. Agricultural life, prior to the industrial revolution, was hard; but it also mixed labour with entertainment. Canning the harvest took effort, but it was a family activity. There is some element different about coming home from work and consciously thinking about entertaining oneself, flipping through the many channels. Workaholism, as often as not, arises because we are bored with leisure.
Images and families
And this, of course, brings up the fourth point - the advertising and entertainment industry. We live in a new era of human history in which we need not search for stimulation - it comes seeking us at every and any opportunity. Previous generations knew live music or they had no music at all. Now it is in our homes, our cars, our rest-rooms. And do we not find it true that it is more difficult to portray goodness and beauty in a way which we find entertaining? Guns and sex are better at stimulation, and the dosage required for the same immunity from boredom gets larger over time and after exposure. The pace of images must increase, as with the volume, as with the violence. Note the fascination with computer effects. Imagine the boredom of a walk in the park as compared to the promise of the video game Warcraft II. But the child grows up and realises that everything offered in the media is disposable, disappointing and sold with a motive.
A fifth and very significant factor is family dysfunction and breakdown. Neglect by parents, who are dissatisfied with life themselves, leaves one with the sense that 'no-one delights in me' and may cause a person to decide not to delight in anyone or anything else. It is almost a strategy of revenge against the world for its lack of love. Boredom becomes insulation from both joy and pain, a protection from further disappointment. Apathy is a freezing of the soul, a retreat from the extremes of involvement. The church is a place where we should be able to replace the loss of community.
Sixthly, this post-modern age is characterised by a form of philosophical boredom. An idealist who has her dreams shattered may lose hope and embrace cynicism. A cynic can 'see through' any pleasure in life to the levels where it will disappoint and fail in its promise. In the post-modern age, we have lost the hope and confidence that answers exists to the insistent questions which life brings to us. The hope in progress of the Enlightenment has been replaced not so much with despair as with boredom. If there is no hope of discovering answers, it rapidly stops being interesting to discuss questions.
The real cause
Underlying all these causes and symptoms is the loss of a Christian worldview. Leaving this is leaving ultimate meaning and purpose, and it acts as an invitation to boredom. The author of Ecclesiastes refused himself no pleasure and delighted in his work - but at the end found it all to be chasing after the wind. Having all that one desires would seem to be the perfect protection from boredom, but actually appears to intensify it. Possessing smaller, alternative gods can bring boredom with the real, existent Creator and with his creation. We go to church with the goal of being made to feel good, for instant pain relief and happiness. The church, to combat the atmosphere of boredom, follows the lead of the culture and begins to make its decisions based around issues of entertainment.
How should we respond?
How then should we respond to the boredom around and within us? The primary issue is how we make sense of the details of life - the tedious things, the dishes and floors which get dirty recurrently. Our approach to these things is crucial. Sometimes we can find more creative ways to do the everyday, sometimes we must change our attitude towards them. Living in an everyday relationship with God and finding your place in his creation can make the simple things of life - even eating and drinking - more interesting and significant because you are doing them in a different context and with a different meaning. When you begin to find people or a situation boring, that is precisely the time to move towards them rather than away. Begin to ask questions of them and discover how they relate to life. A friend in medical school taught me to appreciate birdsongs - and this forever changed walks for me.
Engaging with life
So overcoming boredom does entail effort, resisting the easier route of allowing an industry to entertain us; it involves active choices. Boredom is a refusal to be moved by the contemplation of the beautiful and the good, but it is also a refusal to engage with the ugliness and brokenness of life which needs redemption. God is a God of passion and compassion - suffering for people and suffering with them. He desires us to be like him in this. Engagement with life is not a comfortable path - but neither is it a dull interstate which bypasses life. The test of spirituality is not in our best clothes and in our religious settings, but in our response to the everyday and the unavoidable; the test is in our ability to bring good out of hardship and joy out of the mundane.
The sum of it is this: in loving the Lord our God with all our heart - in loving our neighbour as ourselves - it is difficult for life to be boring, instead we may find ourselves sorry to have only one life to invest.
This article first appeared in 'Worldview', Volume 6, No. 2, from the Francis Schaeffer Institute, St. Louis, USA. and is used with permission.
