“We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practise death is to practise freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. Knowing how to die gives us freedom from subjection and constraint. [C] Life has no evil for him who has thoroughly understood that loss of life is not an evil.”

— Montaigne, ‘The Essays’

Most of what we do is an attempt at escaping that feeling of boredom. Indulging in food and drink on a full belly, or browsing social media apps are two very common ways we do this. But why? What is so unbearable about being bored?

What is Behind Boredom?

What lies behind boredom is the key to discovering purpose, because in boredom a new consciousnessness arises, namely that awareness of unfulfillment. In the stasis of boredom we find ourselves forced inward towards our thoughts, our desires, and our imperfections.

Knowing this, Montaigne locked himself up in his own library for ten years surrounded by nothing but books, and produced by the end of it his greatest work called ‘The Essays’. Boredom became for him a tool to reflect on his own life, and remove the ‘plank in his own eye’.

But when we find ourselves bored, we use it negatively by searching for things to desire or for novel sensations to distract us with. The more profound the boredom, the more intense the evil.

However, our age suffers from an intense mildness. The myriad distractions around us has left boredom almost absent while significantly weakening our desire for success and hard, honest labour. Our most successful people with the exception of none have endured extended periods of intense boredom, and used it as fuel to drive their great achievements. Take the story of Edison and his invention of the lightbulb. How could he have had the zeal to try again and again 1000 times over with the intention of succeeding? This passion for success, or passion for the great would never have been cultivated to the point it did had he been distracted with all the things we have now. He worked without fatiugue, always striving to spend more time and effort than he did on his previous attempts. His dreams and ambitions could only have come about from an intense boredom, a profound silence that was likely developed in his poor upbringing.

Boredom as the Root of Evil

Now although I have described the positive effects of boredom, there a side to which it can cause us to do evil. Kierkegaard described boredom as “demonic pantheism”, that is, that boredom is the manifestation of the devil at play. Therefore we ought to amuse ourselves to annul it. For Kierkegaard, labour (in the sense of productiveness) cannot annul boredom. The busiest of all workers “are the most boring of all”. To the busy workers he writes: “if they don’t bore themselves, that’s because they have no idea what boredom is”.

Kierkegaard and ‘Crop Rotation’

In the midst of feeling that sensation of boredom, we always strive to remove it by seeking novel sensations, or Change of some kind. We almost cry internally for something Different, and we always without fail take this lack of apparent stimulation, or desired stimulation, to be the cause of our boredom. But the more we try to chase change, the more intense the boredom becomes.

Now, welcome the concept of ‘crop rotation’. Consider what Kierkegaard writes:

“The method I propose consists not in changing the soil but, as in the real rotation of crops, in changing the method of cultivation and type of grain. Here, straightaway, we have the principle of limitation, which is the only saving one in the world. The more you limit yourself, the more resourceful you will become. A prisoner in solitary confinement for life is most resourceful, a spider can cause him much amusement…Here we have the extreme principle that seeks relief, not extensively, but intensively.”

Understanding Boredom

Lets get this straight - it is never a solution to strive for shiny objects for the sake of artificial amusement. True amusement comes from retiring our desire for the new, or for the novel. Everything we do then from a place of true amusement, that prides in self-suffiency, will be pure of heart and be aimed towards a higher purpose. It is not enough to chase busyness for its own sake, for then we will become like those desiring Change, and find ourselves more bored than ever. No! Foremost, if we find ourselves chasing the busy life for no other reason than for self-gratification, or in other words to escape boredom, then surely the way out is silence and idleness.

Now I do not mean idleness in the sense of being a sloth, but in the way of commanding self-consciousness. We will never know the value of the work we do until we stop doing it. Just as the heat of the outdoors will never be understood if we’ve never left the cool comfort of the indoors, so too will the fruit of our busyness never be seen unless we pause. And reflect.

Thus, our reflection upon boredom is the best way for gauging the extent to which we accomplish good in our lives, and can serve us as a compass for redirecting our efforts (our busyness) towards more meaningful labour.

Embracing boredom is a kind of death.

Now read Montaigne's quote with this in mind.