Embracing Boredom

Many people ask: What should I do when I’m bored? Why do we get bored?

In reality, boredom is completely normal. To stay alive, humans only truly need to: consume energy (eat and drink), restore bodily functions (sleep), and at most, pass on our genes.

Everything else is non-essential.

The education we receive from childhood constantly tries to imbue life with grand meanings—success, struggle, and self-actualization.

Consequently, when boredom strikes, we are overwhelmed by immense guilt and anxiety.

Work and study were ultimately invented by humans just to pass the time. Or rather, they were created by capitalism to extract value from humanity.

Why do we fear boredom?

Part of the reason lies in the habits formed through capitalist conditioning.

As David Graeber revealed in Bullshit Jobs, modern society has invented countless positions with no real value, solely to tie humans to the production line, forcing them to trade busyness for survival resources.

Another part is the human brain’s instinctive fear of boredom.

Biologically, it’s your body signaling a “lack of stimulation.” To counteract this signal,

we can choose high-level stimulation: reading, learning a new language, or working out.

Or, we can choose low-cost stimulation: scrolling through our phones or binge-watching shows.

In fact, when it comes to the mere function of killing time, learning and scrolling through your phone are no different.

The only things that truly matter are eating and sleeping. Everything else humans scramble to do is just to stimulate the brain and escape boredom.