Boredom Hits Quotes

A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims--these are lucky eventualites but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name. We value love not because it's stronger than death but because it's weaker. Say what you want about love: death will finish it. You will not go on loving in the grave, not in any physical way that will at all resemble love as we know it on earth. The perishable nature of love is what gives love its importance in our lives. If it were endless, if it were on tap, love wouldn't hit us the way it does. And we certainly wouldn't write about it.

When hit by boredom, let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom. In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface. The idea here is to exact a full look at the worst. The reason boredom deserves such scrutiny is that it represents pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor. Boredom is your window on the properties of time that one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one's mental equilibrium. It is your window on time's infinity. Once this window opens, don't try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open.

Some can be more intelligent than others in a structured environment—in fact school has a selection bias as it favors those quicker in such an environment, and like anything competitive, at the expense of performance outside it. Although I was not yet familiar with gyms, my idea of knowledge was as follows. People who build their strength using these modern expensive gym machines can lift extremely large weights, show great numbers and develop impressive-looking muscles, but fail to lift a stone; they get completely hammered in a street fight by someone trained in more disorderly settings. Their strength is extremely domain-specific and their domain doesn't exist outside of ludic—extremely organized—constructs. In fact their strength, as with over-specialized athletes, is the result of a deformity. I thought it was the same with people who were selected for trying to get high grades in a small number of subjects rather than follow their curiosity: try taking them slightly away from what they studied and watch their decomposition, loss of confidence, and denial. (Just like corporate executives are selected for their ability to put up with the boredom of meetings, many of these people were selected for their ability to concentrate on boring material.) I've debated many economists who claim to specialize in risk and probability: when one takes them slightly outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability, they fall apart, with the disconsolate face of a gym rat in front of a gangster hit man.

The narcissist does not feel empathy for others; he or she makes connections with other people for one purpose and one purpose only: narcissistic supply. Narcissistic supply is the attention and admiration of the people the narcissist collects as trophies. It is anything that gives the narcissist a “hit” of praise, or even an emotional reaction to their ploys. They need these sources of supply because they suffer from perpetual boredom, emotional shallowness and the inability to authentically and emotionally connect to others who do have empathy.

Three things make people want to change. One is that they hurt sufficiently. They have beat their heads against the same wall so long that they decide they have had enough. They have invested in the same slot machines without a pay-off for so long that they finally are willing either to stop playing, or to move on to others. Their migraines hurt, their ulcers bleed. They are alcoholic. They have hit the bottom. They beg for relief. They want to change. Another thing that makes people want to change is a slow type of despair called ennui, or boredom. This is what the person has who goes through life saying, "So what?" until he finally asks the ultimate big "So What?" He is ready to change. A third thing that makes people want to change is the sudden discovery that they can. This has been an observable effect of Transactional Analysis. Many people who have shown no particular desire to change have been exposed to Transactional Analysis through lectures or by hearing about it from someone else. This knowledge has produced an excitement about new possibilities, which has led to their further inquiry and a growing desire to change. There is also the type of patient who, although suffering from disabling symptoms, still does not really want to change. His treatment contract reads, "I'll promise to let you help me if I don't have to get well." This negative attitude changes, however, as the patient begins to see that there is indeed another way to live. A working knowledge of P-A-C makes it possible for the Adult to explore new and exciting frontiers of life, a desire which has been there all along but has been buried under the burden of the NOT OK.

I don’t for a moment think I am any braver or better than anybody else. This is how I attempt to explain what gives me the strength to do what I do; when that thunderbolt of an idea first hit me and inspired me to row across oceans, it filled me with a sense of purpose so strong that it overcame my fears. Even when boredom, frustration, fatigue or despair threatened to overwhelm me, it was that powerful sense of purpose that kept me going.

One consistent experience in all these experiments is the fact that the number of hits scored tends to sink after the first attempt, and the results then become negative. But if, for some inner or outer reason, there is a freshening of interest on the subject’s part, the score rises again. Lack of interest and boredom are negative factors; enthusiasm, positive expectation, hope, and belief in the possibility of ESP make for good results and seem to be the real conditions which determine whether there are going to be any results at all.

Human beings want not only to survive, but also to live. We long to experience life in all its vividness, with full, untrammelled emotion. Adults envy the open-hearted and open-minded explorations of children; seeing their joy and curiosity, we pine for our own lost capacity for wide-eyed wonder. Boredom, rooted in a fundamental discomfort with the self, is one of the least tolerable mental states. For the addict the drug provides a route to feeling alive again, if only temporarily. “I am in profound awe of the ordinary,” recalls author and bank robber Stephen Reid of his first hit of morphine. Thomas De Quincey extols opium’s power “to stimulate the capacities of enjoyment.

My mother’s brother Johnny was a Vietnam vet, and he too had been wounded. He had spent a long time in a hospital and he understood more than most what I was going through. Or at least he thought he did, and I appreciated that--even if I didn’t act like it at first. Uncle Johnny started to visit every weekend. He’d come and sit with me to give my parents a little breather. After my dad won the battle over my medication, I was, as I said, a little more lucid. I was also a little more ornery. I wouldn’t let anyone turn on that little red radio. I didn’t even care if Sheryl Crow was telling me what was good. I was more aware of my pain. Just lying there and listening or doing anything at all hurt. My whole body hurt and everyone and everything was to blame. All I wanted to do was sit in silence with the door shut. Uncle Johnny obliged me for a while. He’d come in and sit down in the chair next to my bed. He sat and stared blankly right along with me. But after a while, he couldn’t handle that anymore. One day, on the verge of dying of boredom, Uncle Johnny had had enough. He turned to me and said sternly, “Noah, I’m not gonna sit in here like we’re in an oversized coffin. We’re either opening the door or we’re turning the TV on. Which one do you want?” I rolled my eyes and grumbled for a few minutes before answering, “All right. Turn on the TV.” Without hesitation Uncle Johnny shot up out of that chair and reached up to hit the power button on the TV mounted from the ceiling. No sooner had his butt hit the chair seat than he was right back up again. “Fuck that. I am opening the door, too, because I want it open.” He vigorously emphasized his intention so I didn’t protest. He marched over and swung that door open. I swear he might have even taken a deep breath as if it were fresh mountain air. Then he came back to his chair and sat down.

Take the famous slogan on the atheist bus in London … “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” … The word that offends against realism here is “enjoy.” I’m sorry—enjoy your life? Enjoy your life? I’m not making some kind of neo-puritan objection to enjoyment. Enjoyment is lovely. Enjoyment is great. The more enjoyment the better. But enjoyment is one emotion … Only sometimes, when you’re being lucky, will you stand in a relationship to what’s happening to you where you’ll gaze at it with warm, approving satisfaction. The rest of the time, you’ll be busy feeling hope, boredom, curiosity, anxiety, irritation, fear, joy, bewilderment, hate, tenderness, despair, relief, exhaustion … This really is a bizarre category error. But not necessarily an innocent one … The implication of the bus slogan is that enjoyment would be your natural state if you weren’t being “worried” by us believer … Take away the malignant threat of God-talk, and you would revert to continuous pleasure, under cloudless skies. What’s so wrong with this, apart from it being total bollocks? … Suppose, as the atheist bus goes by, that you are the fifty-something woman with the Tesco bags, trudging home to find out whether your dementing lover has smeared the walls of the flat with her own shit again. Yesterday when she did it, you hit her, and she mewled till her face was a mess of tears and mucus which you also had to clean up. The only thing that would ease the weight on your heart would be to tell the funniest, sharpest-tongued person you know about it: but that person no longer inhabits the creature who will meet you when you unlock the door. Respite care would help, but nothing will restore your sweetheart, your true love, your darling, your joy. Or suppose you’re that boy in the wheelchair, the one with the spasming corkscrew limbs and the funny-looking head. You’ve never been able to talk, but one of your hands has been enough under your control to tap out messages. Now the electrical storm in your nervous system is spreading there too, and your fingers tap more errors than readable words. Soon your narrow channel to the world will close altogether, and you’ll be left all alone in the hulk of your body. Research into the genetics of your disease may abolish it altogether in later generations, but it won’t rescue you. Or suppose you’re that skanky-looking woman in the doorway, the one with the rat’s nest of dreadlocks. Two days ago you skedaddled from rehab. The first couple of hits were great: your tolerance had gone right down, over two weeks of abstinence and square meals, and the rush of bliss was the way it used to be when you began. But now you’re back in the grind, and the news is trickling through you that you’ve fucked up big time. Always before you’ve had this story you tell yourself about getting clean, but now you see it isn’t true, now you know you haven’t the strength. Social services will be keeping your little boy. And in about half an hour you’ll be giving someone a blowjob for a fiver behind the bus station. Better drugs policy might help, but it won’t ease the need, and the shame over the need, and the need to wipe away the shame. So when the atheist bus comes by, and tells you that there’s probably no God so you should stop worrying and enjoy your life, the slogan is not just bitterly inappropriate in mood. What it means, if it’s true, is that anyone who isn’t enjoying themselves is entirely on their own. The three of you are, for instance; you’re all three locked in your unshareable situations, banged up for good in cells no other human being can enter. What the atheist bus says is: there’s no help coming … But let’s be clear about the emotional logic of the bus’s message. It amounts to a denial of hope or consolation, on any but the most chirpy, squeaky, bubble-gummy reading of the human situation. St Augustine called this kind of thing “cruel optimism” fifteen hundred years ago, and it’s still cruel.

One day, on the verge of dying of boredom, Uncle Johnny had had enough. He turned to me and said sternly, “Noah, I’m not gonna sit in here like we’re in an oversized coffin. We’re either opening the door or we’re turning the TV on. Which one do you want?” I rolled my eyes and grumbled for a few minutes before answering, “All right. Turn on the TV.” Without hesitation Uncle Johnny shot up out of that chair and reached up to hit the power button on the TV mounted from the ceiling. No sooner had his butt hit the chair seat than he was right back up again. “Fuck that. I am opening the door, too, because I want it open.” He vigorously emphasized his intention so I didn’t protest. He marched over and swung that door open. I swear he might have even taken a deep breath as if it were fresh mountain air. Then he came back to his chair and sat down. There was a movie on starring Matthew Broderick. I’d never heard of it before but Uncle Johnny was explaining to me that this was a remake and Gene Wilder had played Broderick’s character in the original film. In spite of myself, and my stubborn wish to sit and suffer in silence, I really liked the movie. And I remember thinking, I am really enjoying myself. I even turned to Uncle Johnny and said, “I’m glad we turned the TV on. This is great!” Uncle Johnny just smiled as if to say, “Of course! Finally!” We were right in the middle of the movie when one of my machines started to malfunction. The machine’s beeps drowned out the movie. A nurse came in to fix the problem and it just happened to be the hot nurse I had a crush on. She had short hair, a few tattoos on her arm, and she always wore a bandana over her head. The machine she was trying to fix was plugged in on the other side of the bed, up against the wall. “Oh, I see. Hold on. I have to move the bed out from the wall to fix this,” she said. At this point I was just watching her. She fixed the machine and pushed the bed back up against the wall. She actually hit the wall with the bed and zap! The TV went out! “WHAT?! NO!” I screamed. She couldn’t get it to turn back on. She tried but nothing worked. “Oh no, I’m sorry. We’ll have to get maintenance down here to fix it,” she said with an apologetic look that I met with a glare of disdain. She was no longer hot to me. She was just the nurse who broke the TV. Maintenance didn’t come to repair the TV until the next day. I didn’t get to watch the rest of the movie. In fact, I never saw the end of the movie and I didn’t even know the name of it until years later. Maybe one of these days I’ll get to see The Producers from start to finish.

As she writes, she feels a warm assurance; she likes her phrasing, and her conclusions, which are not absolute. On the contrary, they retain an ambiguous hesitant air, a little like done thinking out loud. She rereads her first notes and at times disagrees with herself, and she loves that, she has always liked changing her mind. She thinks about Chaura Paillacar struggling with headaches and about the unnamed poet's jumpy eyes, and Aurelia Bala writing with both hands and Floridor Pérez with his son Chile, whom she imagines as a teenager every bit as skinny and gangly as the country that gave him the name he wanted to change at any cost. She thinks about Hernaldo Bravo just after he was hit by a car, in a hospital, writing poems out of pure boredom, and about the twins scribbling incessantly on the walls of Bernadita Socorro's small, light-filled apartment... that the world of Chilean poets is a little stupid but it is more genuine, less false than the ordinary lives of people who follow the rules and keep their heads down. Of course there is opportunism and cruelty, but also real passion and heroism and allegiance to dreams. She thinks that Chilean poets are stray dogs and stray dogs are Chilean poets and that she herself is a Chilean poet, poking her snout into the trash cans of an unknown city...

As she writes, she feels a warm assurance; she likes her phrasing, and her conclusions, which are not absolute. On the contrary, they retain an ambiguous, hesitant air, a little like someone thinking out loud. She rereads her first notes and at times disagrees with herself, and she loves that, she has always liked changing her mind. She thinks about Chaura Paillacar struggling with headaches and about the unnamed poet's jumpy eyes, and Aurelia Bala writing with both hands and Floridor Pérez with his son Chile, whom she imagines as a teenager every bit as skinny and gangly as the country that gave him the name he wanted to change at any cost. She thinks about Hernaldo Bravo just after he was hit by a car, in a hospital, writing poems out of pure boredom, and about the twins scribbling incessantly on the walls of Bernadita Socorro's small, light-filled apartment... that the world of Chilean poets is a little stupid but it is more genuine, less false than the ordinary lives of people who follow the rules and keep their heads down. Of course there is opportunism and cruelty, but also real passion and heroism and allegiance to dreams. She thinks that Chilean poets are stray dogs and stray dogs are Chilean poets and that she herself is a Chilean poet, poking her snout into the trash cans of an unknown city...

The hospital has plenty of boredom to go around. Wake up, eat, take medications, undergo treatments, the ministrations that don’t belong to us. They belong to Time, Disease, and Death. But the Hit List moments? They’re ours.

I've tried reading the Bible. I never make it past all the talk about the firmament. The firmament is the thing, on Day 1 or 2, that divides the waters from the waters. Here you have the firmament. Next to the firmament, the waters. Stay with the waters long enough, presumably you hit another stretch of firmament. I can't say for sure: at the first mention of the firmament, I start bleeding tears of terminal boredom. I grow restless. I flick ahead. It appears to go like this: firmament, superlong middle part, Jesus. You could spend half your life reading about the barren wives and the kindled wraths and all the rest of it before you got to the do-unto-others part, which as I understand it is the high-water mark.

In late 2014, Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson sold his company to Microsoft for $2.5 billion. Notch published a depressive justification for his desire to recede from public life thanks to the impossibility of satisfying the onslaught of demands from his customers and fans—another thing that can turn on you, it turns out. Then he bought a $70 million Beverly Hills mansion, along with all the furnishings, accessories, art, even the cases of champagne and tequila, even the ultraluxury vehicles the real estate speculator who built the place had installed within its sprawling garage for staging. Notch, the man who made a blank canvas world in which you could make anything, used the spoils to buy a prepackaged, off-the-shelf billionaire’s life. As for his fans, undeterred, they dutifully reconstructed a version of the $70 million mansion in Minecraft.16 It’s an addict’s logic: only one more hand, only one more hit, then I’ll be satisfied. Then I can stop. But, of course, that’s not how addiction works. With every repetition, the effect of a compulsion reduces, requiring even more stimulation to produce formerly intoxicating results. Such

I uh ... think I'd better go," Juliet said. "A pity, that."  He lifted the glass to his lips, his eyes watching her from above its rim. "I cannot talk you into staying, then?" "No. But I'll come back later if you like. Maybe I can bring your supper up to you or something...." "Would you? I would like that. In fact, I would like that very much indeed. Otherwise boredom will force me to read those silly letters, and I confess, Miss Paige, that I would much rather spend the time with you."  He grinned. "And Charlotte, if you will bring her." "I will bring her." "Good. I am looking forward to getting to know both my niece and her lovely mama. When you return, I want to hear all about America, your sea-crossing, everything. And I want a full report on how — Oh, dear —"  He suddenly started and blinked several times in rapid succession, as though the whiskey had just caught him very much by surprise (which in itself was no surprise, Juliet thought, given the amount he had downed and the speed with which he had consumed it). He shook his head, slowly, and tipped it back against the pillows with an apologetic little smile. "That is to say, I want a full report on how Lucien is treating you." "You shall have it then, Lord Gareth."  She plucked the empty glass from his hand and placed it back on the table. "But for now, I think you had better rest." "Yes ... I fear I have no choice about that, given the way those spirits have just hit me!  I am sorry, Miss Paige; I have no wish to be rude, it usually takes much more than three glasses to get me to this state ... but oh, isn't it strange, how the loss of a little blood seems to carry a man's vitality off with it, as well...." "I wouldn't know."  She smiled and moved forward to gently pull the sheet up over his chest. He looked up at her through his lashes and gave her a slow, sleepy smile, content to let her fuss over him, grateful for the attention, a man completely at ease in the company of a woman. "Thank you," he murmured, smiling as he let his eyes drift shut. "I think I shall enjoy ... my dreams." She

Without external threats and challenges people just fall apart. Imagine a video game where you start with infinite hit points, currency, and weapons. Your video game character would just turn into a complete degenerate who would just mess around out of boredom, the entire society would turn into Grand Theft Auto. Keep in mind the vast majority of people are selfish, dumb, and foolish, especially so without societies that socialize them to be better. Without external pressure, society collapses into degeneracy.

Boredom, however, is another rot. When your three days are up, you generally hit Lifeline hard, and it returns the compliment as a matter of reflex. The effects of alcohol in variant atmospheres is a subject on which the connoisseurs have written numerous volumes, so I will confine my remarks to noting that a good binge is worthy of at least a week’s time and often warrants a lifetime study.

The point is not to worry about hitting the target. The point is to fall in love with the boredom of doing the work and embrace each piece of the process. The point is to take that moment of zanshin, that moment of complete awareness and focus, and carry it with you everywhere in life. It is not the target that matters. It is not the finish line that matters. It is the way we approach the goal that matters. Everything is aiming. Zanshin.

The authors found that brief periods of cyberloafing actually helped admins fight the boredom that so often comes from hours and hours of transcribing documents, organizing files, making copies, and running office errands. Rather than sapping their productivity, taking a moment to cyberloaf helped these employees hit the mental refresh button so they could return to their work with renewed energy.24 Several other studies suggest employees become more productive and focused after a good cyberloafing session.25

I thought about beautiful bodies like Vera’s, if she were whole: white bones that shine under the light in forgotten graves, thin bones that sound like little party bells when they hit against each other, frolicking in the fields, doing dances of death. He has nothing to do with the ethereal beauty of those naked bones: his are covered with layers of fat and boredom. Vera and I will be beautiful and light, nocturnal and earthy; beautiful, the crusts of earth enfolding us. Hollow, dancing skeletons. Vera and I—no flesh over our bones.

Ideas rarely come from watching television. Ideas sometimes come from listening to a lecture. Ideas often come while reading a book. Good ideas come from bad ideas, but only if there are enough of them. Ideas hate conference rooms, particularly conference rooms where there is a history of criticism, personal attacks, or boredom. Ideas occur when dissimilar universes collide. Ideas often strive to meet expectations. If people expect them to appear, they do. Ideas fear experts, but they adore beginners’ minds. A little awareness is a good thing. Ideas come in spurts, until you get frightened. Willie Nelson wrote three of his biggest hits in one week. Ideas come from trouble. Ideas come from our ego, and they do their best when they’re generous and selfless. Ideas come from nature. Sometimes ideas come from fear but often they come from confidence. Useful ideas come from being awake and alert enough to actually notice.

People are hitting a new level of boredom in just one week. God forbid but what would people do if it extends to twelve weeks?