When Boredom Comes

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

All of us from time to time are visited by a painful, agonizing state of boredom from lack of business and interest in the environment, which is characterized by a decrease in activity, a lack of interest in something and the difficulty of keeping attention on something specific.

In addition to all of the above, we can feel anxiety in connection with this state and an insistent desire to change the situation, to get away from these unpleasant sensations - after all, sometimes boredom is simply unbearable.

Boredom can be caused by tedious monotonous work, as well as a state of inner emptiness and satiety with life.

It appears as a completely natural reaction to a lack of activity (when a person cannot do what he wants), when he has to do something that he has no interest in, or when for some reason it is difficult for a person to do something (which he wants study).

In other words, boredom is the brain's reaction to a situation when everything new in the environment has ended or situations that require development and some kind of creative process have disappeared. For example, when every day is similar to the previous one (groundhog day), everything is tired and old things are no longer pleasing, the brain recognizes the environment as extremely poor and presses the "boredom" button, urging a person to search for something new and interesting. After all, he needs to develop and learn the world - for many centuries, it was thanks to this that humanity survived.

Boredom is behind curiosity. It distracts from doing routine tasks, and makes you try to look for new goals, explore new territories or ideas. Without the ability to boredom, people would never have reached the current artistic and technological heights - thanks to it, the imagination is liberated, a person can get out of the usual framework and start thinking differently.

The only problem is that at the click of your fingers it is impossible to find an activity that can immediately overwhelm a wonderful creative wave - this requires time devoted to the thought process and choosing among the many activities.

But the state of boredom, when something new and interesting still does not appear, many people often want to interrupt with some kind of fast dopamine - high-calorie food, sweets, watching TV series, computer games, alcohol, etc. And then it can become the beginning of a depressive state and contribute to the development various dependencies.

Boredom can also be pathological and haunt a person throughout his life if he does not have active desires and he prefers to go with the flow, showing absolutely no effort.

There are also people with an increased tendency to boredom, whose brains are designed in such a way that they require constant innovation and fresh impressions, and this is one of the reasons for the constant search for different adventures and experiences.

Why is the state of boredom so disgusting and you want to escape from it?

William James explained it this way: we hate when the time that happens "here and now" seems to us prohibitively long and we grieve when the past period of time seems short to us. But we feel great when the time passing "here and now" seems to us in an instant and immensely happy when the past period of time seems to us in memory very long (longer than it actually was).

Therefore, in order to avoid fatal boredom (the formula "now - long, then - there is nothing to remember"), it is necessary that life be filled with a variety of impressions that will be organized rhythmically, in the manner of breathing or heartbeat. Those. you need to create a regime for yourself and adhere to the established routine.

In other words, boredom has dragged on - get down to business, otherwise the brain itself will come up with a way out of the situation and it is not a fact that it will be useful for the body. After all, he is still a lazy person and would rather tend to get some kind of quick pleasure than to a long search for something that will be really interesting.