On Boredom

I never get bored, regardless of whether I'm driving cross country or am stuck in the waiting room of the doctor's office. Though I harbor no wish to find out, I'll wager that boredom couldn't touch me even if I were placed into solitary confinement. (For a funny portrayal of that predicament, watch the scene in Stir Crazy where Gene Wilder emerges from several days in a prison oven only to declare, "Please, just one more day . . . I was just getting into myself.")

People who get bored easily have always struck me as the most shallow, and it was the great philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who offered an explanation for why this is so: the vast majority of people use their intellect as a mere tool to satisfy the will's urges, so whenever the will lacks a tangible target, the intellect flounces around aimlessly. For those of us who enjoy using the intellect for its own sake -- and not as a means to an immediate end -- the intellect truly comes alive when mundane activity ceases. It's precisely when everyone else is getting bored that I'm getting happier, since I can finally indulge in introspection, reflection, and good old-fashioned daydreaming.

Our modern world offers an endless variety of ways to avoid boredom by engaging the senses in some tangible activity or other. While this sheds light on who all the shallow people are -- the ones desperately texting, chattering, or gaming -- it unfortunately has the side-effect of creating shallow people whose fledgling minds are drowned under the cacophony during childhood.