The Painful Reality of Boredom And How Anyone Can Cure It

Boredom is unpleasant. Or is it?

Most people think boredom is a matter of not being interested in what they’re doing. But that’s what it wants you to believe. Boredom is your reaction to “the deeply uncomfortable experience of confronting your limited control,” to put it in the words of Oliver Burkeman.

Boredom is the reality that time is finite, and you’d like to master control over every second of it, so you don’t have to face the fact that all of this, your life, is far beyond your control.

Most people escape boredom online.

At the swipe of a finger, dopamine floods your body, and boredom vanishes — like a hormone magic trick.

The digital world is a place that feels as though it has no limits. A place where you can transport yourself to anywhere in the world, pretend to be who you want to be and scroll through an endless newsfeed, and as James Duesterberg puts it, escape through “a realm in which space doesn’t matter and time spreads out into an endless present.”

Boredom is the escapism of the present moment, in all its raw boring glory.

If you want to control boredom, you have to resign yourself to your current reality.