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People go crazy because they’re bored. Workers hate their jobs because they are bored. Partners cheat on their spouses because they are bored. The leading reason why addicts tell me they relapse is they are bored. Also, writers write, painters paint, players play, and inventors invent because, if they did not, they would be bored. Boredom can lead to everything from wasted, whiney days to searing insights and helpful inventions, from depression to mania, from a dull, laggard apathy to a determination to escape.
Boredom is such a powerful and common emotion, you would think we would understand it better, but it’s hard to study emotions, or any subjective state. Patricia Meyer Spacks came up with her own way of looking into what boredom is, what it means, and what it does. Since she’s an English professor, she looked at how the word boredom is used in literature and language. Continue reading →
Keith R Wilson 