How boring isn’t it? And I’m not talking about a specific moment, no; I’m talking about everything in general. Some even call it the “boom epidemic”: this phenomenon of hyperconnectivity, which consists of jumping from stimulus to stimulus with the idea of ​​killing (and ending) any dead time, just to get bored just as much as we are. Or more. But what if I told you it’s okay to be bored?

What are we talking about when we talk about boredom? The first is the first. Perhaps the world’s foremost expert on boredom is John Eastwood, a professor at York University in Canada who has studied the subject for more than a decade. The classic definition of boredom is his: “the gruesome experience of wanting to participate in a satisfying activity and not being able to.” In simple words: This is something that happens when, although we want to, we are unable to focus our attention on a particular thing and meanwhile ascribe this problem to the environment.

swamp. This last one is important. First of all, because the natural tendency (when we are bored) is to look for external stimuli and distractions. We were hungry for fun and went out to hunt it. But that becomes a problem: In fact, what Eastwood’s team discovered was that this solution was wrong. Doing so serves to strengthen the grip of boredom by further alienating our desires and passions, just like the swamp trap. “.

As we know, people who are more bored are not only outwardly focused, as I just said, but also have a harder time identifying their own emotions. In this way, the more we focus on finding the things that attract our attention, distract us, entertain us; We detach ourselves more from our own desires. And we get lost (and bored) in overstimulation.

And that’s a problem because boredom has many downsides. Until relatively recently, boredom was a little-studied topic. But in recent years we’ve learned a lot and come to understand why boredom has such a bad name. That is, we discovered its association with depression and anger, pathological gambling, bad driving, lower levels of self-actualization, and even aggression and impulsivity). Because yes, boredom is more than a clear trigger for aggression.

What’s the use of being bored? Considering all these, it is useful to ask: What’s the point of being bored? And in general terms, this particularly unpleasant character of boredom seems to “drive people to engage in activities they find more meaningful than what they have at hand.” That is, “the unpleasant feeling of boredom “reminds” people that there are more important matters. […]more valuable things to do.

The problem is how we use this boredom.. If you’ve followed me this far and you’ve gotten rid of boredom, you’ll know it’s a haddock biting its tail. Boredom reminds us that we have more important things to do, but looking for them makes us even more bored: This trip doesn’t need saddlebags.

But this is because the cultural point of view makes the other option invisible. Working heavily on clinical issues (that is, working with people who are “sick from boredom”), the Eastwood team realized that the real problem lay in this outside call. His suggestion is to understand boredom as an opportunity to “discover the possibility and content of one’s own desires.”

Image | Priscilla DuPreez