Boredom’s cause isn’t environment

By the time you mothers read this, it should be late enough in the summer for you to have heard, “Mommy, I’m bored. What can I do?” In fact, you’ve probably heard it so many times you are ready to throw up your hands and buy a one-way ticked to Hong Kong.

Young children frequently experience boredom due to several factors, including a short attention span. With school starting soon, the days will be filled with activities and this boredom should subside.

Not so with adults who also frequently complain of boredom, a psychological phenomenon like stress. Stress results from the way we perceive the environment around us and not from the events themselves. It is our interpretation of these events that determines whether we fell stressed.

Boredom falls into this category because it is a feeling from within. Many people describe it as an emptiness, a feeling of disconnectedness or of drifting along without direction. Over the years I have found that these types of people tend to be bored:

• Those who resist or have never learned to set short-term goals. They flit through life from flower to flower like a bumblebee (although the expression “busy as a bee” would tend to indicate that bumblebees don’t get bored). This frequently is associated with a lack of maturity.

Spending some time with an older, more experienced and mature person may help establish some direction and purpose in these people’s lives and thus move them away from boredom.

• Retired people who don’t have enough activities to fill their time become bored. They have either produced a product, offered a service or performed some other meaningful activity regularly. They developed a rhythm and lifestyle in which work played a significant, if not focal, role.

Upon retirement, a void developed. A tragedy can occur if such a person does not find some meaningful reason for living.

• Sensation-seekers who live from one adrenalin high to another complain of boredom if they are not climbing a mountain, jumping from a plane or driving a fast automobile. They live for excitement and when they do not find it they become bored.

Although these people have goals, their goals involve only excitement. Sitting down with a good book does not enter into their scheme of things. Getting them to back off and seek moderation as a lifestyle is difficult. They may seek even greater highs that include alcohol and drugs.

A stable environment, a lot of luck and frequently some professional counseling is needed to help them reframe the meaning of boredom.

• Excessive and prolonged stress leading to burnout often leaves the burnout victim feeling bored and lethargic. A person going through a midlife crisis may make an ill-advised job change or have an extramarital affair as a solution to his discontent and perceived boredom.

Helping an individual shift away from self-centered thinking and begin looking at others’ needs – at helping other people - is often a good start toward relieving boredom. This perspective is usually not easy or rapidly achieved, but it is well worth considering as an antidote for boredom.

Harold H. LeCrone, Jr., Ph.D. Copyright 1987