The Art of Manliness - A Cure for Existential Boredom

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.660 It's one thing to be bored by having to wait in line or sit through a dry lecture.

00:00:15.480 It's another thing to be bored with life itself.

00:00:18.480 What can you do about this kind of existential boredom?

00:00:21.300 My guest will share a remedy with us today on the show.

00:00:24.220 His name is Kevin Hood-Gary, and he's a professor of education specializing in the philosophy

00:00:28.840 of education.

00:00:30.000 We begin our conversation with the difference between situational and existential boredom

00:00:33.640 and how the latter arises when we toggle solely between work and amusement.

00:00:38.420 Kevin argues that we need to add an element of leisure, as the ancients understood it,

00:00:42.080 into our lives.

00:00:43.040 We talk about what that looks like and how it requires embracing solitude, study, epiphanies,

00:00:48.200 and love.

00:00:49.360 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash existentialboredom.

00:01:00.000 All right, Kevin Gary, welcome to the show.

00:01:09.460 Thank you.

00:01:09.800 Great to be here.

00:01:10.700 So you recently published a book called Why Boredom Matters, Education, Leisure, and the

00:01:16.080 Quest for a Meaningful Life.

00:01:18.200 What led you to write a book about boredom and how to deal with it?

00:01:21.540 So I actually wrote a paper, oh, about 10 years ago on boredom and contemplation, and

00:01:28.120 a colleague of mine in an ed psychology class was actually teaching the paper and shared

00:01:33.580 that it was one of the most engaging readings.

00:01:36.120 The students really, really were just taken up with it.

00:01:39.460 And so he said, you should develop this further.

00:01:41.560 And so that was a nice kind of nudge.

00:01:43.200 And, you know, it's a topic that's been of interest to me for a long time for a lot of

00:01:47.960 reasons.

00:01:48.360 One, because it's just one of these enduring problems that human beings have had to contend

00:01:53.460 with.

00:01:54.280 And it's a problem that's linked to so many other problems.

00:01:57.420 When we're bored, we consume too much, eat too much, drink too much, idle our time.

00:02:02.720 And so that's fascinating to me.

00:02:05.120 Whenever I would share with friends or family I'm writing a book on boredom, the response

00:02:09.760 I almost universally would receive was, wow, that sounds really interesting.

00:02:13.200 Which I always found amusing given that boredom is defined as a state of disinterest.

00:02:19.260 And I think the interest is that it's really an interest in human flourishing.

00:02:23.320 And if we're living lives and we're finding ourselves bored, we're not flourishing.

00:02:27.220 And so the kind of research and work that I do really is about what does it mean to flourish

00:02:31.740 as a human being?

00:02:33.220 And this is just a central topic.

00:02:35.180 And what I also enjoy about it is it draws on so many other disciplines.

00:02:38.680 It's a complex problem.

00:02:40.180 There's been a lot of psychology in the last 20 years, but it needs more than just psychologists.

00:02:45.040 So theologians, philosophers, great writers, Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger has this beautiful

00:02:50.560 quote on boredom, which kind of echoes Pascal's, you know, the root of all evil is our inability

00:02:55.480 to sit still in a room.

00:02:56.720 So it just brings a lot of stuff together and really ultimately brings up questions about

00:03:01.520 meaning and purpose, which I'm really fascinated with.

00:03:05.000 Well, you talk about there's two types of boredom that we encounter in life.

00:03:08.140 The first one is situational boredom.

00:03:10.560 How do you describe situational boredom?

00:03:13.080 So actually Heidegger wrote some lectures and is credited with making this distinction between

00:03:18.260 situational and existential.

00:03:20.060 And situational, he describes being at a train station, just being stuck in a situation that

00:03:24.380 he wants to get out of, but he's stuck.

00:03:26.060 And this is, you know, before smartphones.

00:03:27.960 And when we think about situational boredom, we usually think about it objectively.

00:03:31.600 You know, I'm bored by this lecture or I'm bored by this book I'm reading, but it's also

00:03:36.400 subjective.

00:03:37.340 We're making an assessment about the situation.

00:03:40.180 So what might be boring to one person could be engaging to another.

00:03:43.700 So it's a perplexing mood state.

00:03:45.220 And we can think about sort of certain conditions that many of us would find boring, but there

00:03:49.860 are people who are, this great writer, David Fenmore described himself as unboreable, just

00:03:54.960 an ability to sit with his thoughts and be engaged.

00:03:58.220 And so it's not just objective.

00:04:00.660 It's both objective and subjective with situational.

00:04:03.800 So there's two conditions for situational boredom.

00:04:06.060 Like you're just in a situation where there's understimulation, right?

00:04:08.520 Like waiting at the train station, waiting at the post office.

00:04:11.180 But then the second condition is a feeling that you've lost your agency.

00:04:16.060 So that's like the subjective part.

00:04:17.200 Like there's just nothing you could do.

00:04:18.580 Like your kids, whenever you hear your kids complain about being bored, this is the example

00:04:22.820 of the loss of agency where your kid says, I'm bored.

00:04:25.940 There's nothing to do.

00:04:27.180 And then the parent usually responds, what are you talking about?

00:04:29.640 You can go outside, you can do it, but they feel like there's nothing to do.

00:04:33.740 Yeah.

00:04:34.280 Yeah.

00:04:34.500 You're stuck.

00:04:35.400 And yeah, that's a great example.

00:04:36.740 I used to do technology fast weekends with my kids where I would say, all right, no screens.

00:04:41.840 And, you know, invariably I'm bored.

00:04:43.980 There's nothing to do.

00:04:44.840 They just could not see any way their agency could remedy the situation.

00:04:49.420 And so we experience situational boredom on a daily basis, but there's things we can do

00:04:53.020 to alleviate situational boredom.

00:04:55.000 You can get out your smartphone, you can read, or you could talk to somebody, you could play

00:04:59.760 a game with your kid while you're waiting for food at the restaurant.

00:05:02.840 But the second type of boredom that you mentioned is more pernicious and difficult to deal with,

00:05:08.080 and that's existential boredom.

00:05:09.440 So what is existential boredom?

00:05:12.220 So to be existentially bored, there's a great quote from Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.

00:05:16.680 He describes existential boredom.

00:05:18.840 He's talking about someone who finally gets what they want and they realize they don't really

00:05:22.600 want it.

00:05:23.540 It's a desire for desires.

00:05:26.000 A simple example I think of is, you know, sometimes looking at Netflix, trying to find something

00:05:30.540 to watch and you've got 5,000 titles, and there's just nothing of interest, which is

00:05:34.920 kind of amazing given all the options to be engaged and interested.

00:05:38.880 And so to be existentially bored is to suffer a more profound kind of boredom where the situational

00:05:44.600 solutions, you know, going from one boring situation to an interesting situation really

00:05:49.140 start to exhaust themselves.

00:05:51.200 And it really is calling forth then, I need to rethink who I am, what I'm doing, what is

00:05:56.900 my existence even about?

00:05:58.440 So it is a much more profound kind of boredom.

00:06:01.800 The distinction, though, between existential boredom and clinical depression, which it's

00:06:06.440 a close cousin of, but I think the difference is when we're existentially bored, there's

00:06:10.280 still a hope that, you know, we desire for desires.

00:06:14.140 We desire something to make life meaningful.

00:06:16.020 There's still a hope that we're going to find it.

00:06:17.700 So we're still searching, if you will.

00:06:20.640 Yeah.

00:06:20.700 You gave this great quote from, it was Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, kind of describing what

00:06:28.200 existential boredom can feel like.

00:06:29.980 I'll read it out.

00:06:30.780 It says, I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright white boxes and

00:06:35.520 separating one box from another was sleep like a black shade. 0.92

00:06:38.940 Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next day had suddenly

00:06:43.960 snapped up and I could see day after day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad,

00:06:49.680 infinitely desolate avenue.

00:06:51.780 Just the, yeah, you just feel like, oh man, it's just monotonous.

00:06:54.300 There's just no point to going on.

00:06:56.100 Why am I even doing this?

00:06:57.200 Yeah, that is such a powerful and troubling quote.

00:07:02.240 And, you know, to the extent that we fully identify with that quote, I think we're probably

00:07:06.920 moving into clinical depression.

00:07:08.760 But to the extent that we identify with the quote and have, you know, some days that are

00:07:12.960 like that, but thankfully are able to have resilience to move out of that, then I think

00:07:16.640 we're more in the existentially bored state.

00:07:19.640 And this existential boredom, this is the thing that humans have been grappling with for millennia.

00:07:23.820 I mean, you, you highlight how theologians and religious thinkers have been trying to

00:07:29.460 grapple with this, right?

00:07:30.720 You think monks, Catholic monks, they called it a cedia.

00:07:33.860 What was existential boredom like for them?

00:07:35.920 Like what was a cedia?

00:07:38.320 Yeah.

00:07:38.900 So I guess what I found, I don't know, unsatisfying in a lot of the contemporary writing on boredom

00:07:44.240 is it's descriptive and I was wanting more normative guidance on how do we contend with this

00:07:50.300 mood state?

00:07:50.820 And so when you trace the lineage of this phenomena, you know, the monks in the fourth

00:07:55.520 century of Agrius being one of the great writers talking about a cedia, he's talking about a

00:08:00.260 thought that he calls or describes as one of the eight deadly thoughts that this is, this

00:08:05.380 is morally hazardous territory when we're falling into a state of a cedia, which gets described

00:08:10.900 as the noonday devil, which, you know, it's called the noonday devil because it happens

00:08:16.300 upon us in broad daylight without our even realizing it.

00:08:19.360 We can just stumble upon it.

00:08:20.640 And so you go from this, this eight deadly thoughts, which actually then become the seven

00:08:24.500 deadly sins with a cedia being folded in to the sin of sloth. 0.99

00:08:29.300 And I think that was a loss.

00:08:30.320 I think there's a theoretical richness to a cedia that is really worth retrieving.

00:08:34.500 But it goes from that to, oh, in the Renaissance, you know, the French word melancholy, which

00:08:40.140 was an attempt to understand boredom, not as a spiritual malaise connected to our status

00:08:45.600 vis-a-vis God, but really as a, as a medical or physiological phenomena.

00:08:51.360 Melancholy literally translates as black bile.

00:08:54.400 And so the science of that is obviously proven not to bear out, but there still is an attempt

00:09:00.780 to try to just completely medicalize it.

00:09:03.680 And then when you get to the word boredom in the, it's the 18th century, boredom is kind

00:09:08.740 of a hybrid term.

00:09:10.260 It's, it's, it's trying to resist becoming either too scientifically reductive or too connected

00:09:16.440 to a spiritual metaphysics.

00:09:18.860 And so I think it's really worthwhile to have all of these in conversation with each other

00:09:24.360 because Evagrius was actually not just diagnosing, but prescribing directives for how to contend

00:09:30.600 with this troubling mood state.

00:09:32.360 Oh yeah, this existential boredom.

00:09:33.760 I get the feeling I've, I've experienced that.

00:09:35.980 And I think that's one of the problems of modern life.

00:09:38.300 You hear a lot of people talking about burnout, right?

00:09:41.180 I'm burnt out.

00:09:42.140 And the way they describe burnout, it's the same way that monks described a cedia back in 0.80

00:09:47.560 the fourth century.

00:09:48.240 And there's another idea besides burnout, there's rust out, right?

00:09:52.120 It's where you don't feel like you've exhausted yourself, but you feel like you are understimulated

00:09:56.300 and you're actually not calling upon all of your faculties to engage with life.

00:10:00.340 And so you just feel blah all the time.

00:10:03.800 And that's a growing complaint amongst people.

00:10:06.160 Like, what do you think it is about modern life that makes us prone to be existentially

00:10:11.100 bored?

00:10:12.340 Yeah, I haven't heard rust out.

00:10:14.420 I've heard burnout and I've heard burn in where I'm thinking about it in the

00:10:18.120 context of teachers who don't burn out, leave the profession, but burn in.

00:10:22.580 They sort of settle and they stagnate.

00:10:25.280 And they, you know, we've all had experience with teachers that are just not engaged.

00:10:30.240 They probably shouldn't be teaching, but, you know, they need a job.

00:10:33.580 So what is it about modern life that leads to burnout?

00:10:37.060 You know, Aristotle talks about these two kind of spheres.

00:10:40.020 There's work where we're on, we're engaged, we're trying to be professional and we're responsible.

00:10:44.120 And we need a break, you know, we need, we need, we need to relax.

00:10:47.320 And that leads to then this other sphere of life, which is amusement, you know, which

00:10:51.360 is simply not working and just needing a reprieve from work.

00:10:56.800 And I think that cycle plays off of each other in ways that are just not helpful because there's

00:11:03.120 a whole nother way of being in the world, which I get into in the book where you're contending

00:11:07.080 with boredom and you seek amusement to avoid boredom, but you miss what I described as these

00:11:13.520 restorative forms of leisure.

00:11:15.520 This is what Avagrius and some of the monks were talking about.

00:11:17.900 There are ways of being in the world that aren't work, that aren't amusement, which can

00:11:21.940 often be an escapist distraction, but rather leisure.

00:11:25.880 And so I think not having leisure makes us prime to be, you know, to be burning out or

00:11:31.260 rusting out as you, as you put it.

00:11:33.040 Okay.

00:11:33.120 We'll, we'll talk more about leisure because this was, I love this, this idea of reviving

00:11:37.180 this ancient idea of leisure.

00:11:38.520 But before we do, let's talk about boredom a little bit more because you go in deep into

00:11:42.500 the philosopher, one of my favorite philosophers, Soren Kierkegaard, where he explores, he really

00:11:48.180 grappled with the source of our existential boredom.

00:11:51.440 So what did Kierkegaard believe was the source of our existential boredom?

00:11:57.140 So Heidegger has a huge debt to Kierkegaard.

00:12:00.020 You know, Kierkegaard's authorship, I wrote my dissertation on Kierkegaard.

00:12:03.120 And he begins his first pseudonym, Poet A, is a person who's chronically bored with life.

00:12:09.760 And actually it was one of the most popular books that he wrote that sold the most.

00:12:13.800 And it was part of, you know, either or.

00:12:15.440 And so the second part of it was the judge.

00:12:17.180 And the judge is kind of like a parent telling an aimless bored child, you just need to grow

00:12:21.720 up.

00:12:22.240 And the poet's like, no, I'm not convinced.

00:12:24.440 I'm going to figure out ways to overcome boredom.

00:12:27.740 And he has all these different boredom avoidance strategies, which, you know, are really kind

00:12:33.140 of intriguing, insightful.

00:12:35.740 But it's a later pseudonym, Anticlimicus, who reveals that the poet is actually very confused

00:12:41.680 about how to contend with boredom wisely.

00:12:44.700 And so, you know, in looking at boredom, Kierkegaard doesn't just see, you know, something that's

00:12:48.980 situational, he sees forms of despair that are taking hold.

00:12:54.100 Kierkegaard has this really dense definition of the self, which I'm not going to read it

00:12:58.200 exactly.

00:12:58.740 But summarizing it, he says that the self is a combination of possibility and necessity.

00:13:05.100 And in defining necessity, he means just the givens or determinants that keep us where we

00:13:11.840 are.

00:13:12.520 I'm thinking about this, actually.

00:13:13.820 I got to visit a classroom a few years ago.

00:13:16.260 It was an eighth grade classroom, and the students were tasked with writing or copying

00:13:20.500 a PowerPoint word for word for the entire period.

00:13:23.920 And I remember turning to one of the students and I asked, you know, is this a typical day?

00:13:27.120 And the student said, we do this every day.

00:13:30.240 And you could just see or feel the despair of necessity.

00:13:33.980 The students, they weren't disruptive.

00:13:36.320 They were not creating any chaos, which actually would have been creating another possibility.

00:13:40.680 They were just resigned to this is all we can do.

00:13:43.640 And there was one student, though, and this is where I connected to possibility, who was

00:13:48.560 doing these wonderful doodles on her notebook, finding an artistic possibility in the midst

00:13:53.020 of this situation that was, I think, very much characterized by despair of resignation.

00:13:57.860 And so to be given to the despair of necessity is to sort of not see a possibility for things

00:14:04.620 to be otherwise.

00:14:05.300 You're just literally stuck.

00:14:06.560 And that's the kind of boredom where the response is, just resign yourself to it.

00:14:11.820 And, you know, I think that's resonant with Henry David Thoreau's, you know, people lead

00:14:16.060 lives of quiet desperation.

00:14:18.360 And I think he's talking about the despair of necessity.

00:14:20.460 We just do not see or cannot imagine other possibilities for how to live our lives.

00:14:26.400 Accepting the despair of necessity reminded me of Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus.

00:14:29.780 Right.

00:14:30.440 So Sisyphus is pushing up that boulder for eternity and then it rolls back down and Camus

00:14:36.800 said, well, that's just absurd.

00:14:37.980 But, you know, Sisyphus accepted the boredom or they accepted that as absurd.

00:14:43.220 He just kind of derived some sort of weird pleasure from it.

00:14:46.120 Yeah.

00:14:47.140 Yeah.

00:14:47.580 And then the flip side.

00:14:48.380 So you're stuck in necessity is the despair of possibility, which he defines simply as to

00:14:52.960 be without necessity.

00:14:53.820 And what he means by that is we tend to get caught up in a world of fantasy or possibilities.

00:15:00.700 When we think about, you know, trolling through social media, we're basically looking at the

00:15:05.240 lives of others or watching, you know, Netflix.

00:15:08.080 We're just dwelling in the world of the possibilities for other people or other imagined people rather

00:15:13.680 than what is possible for me, given the necessities I'm contending with.

00:15:18.120 And it's in negotiating those two together where agency can emerge that is steering clear

00:15:24.200 of these two poles of despair.

00:15:26.720 The difference for Kierkegaard is he doesn't think that we ever can do this on our own,

00:15:31.280 that we need grace.

00:15:32.620 We need something outside of us to help us navigate these two tendencies, these two poles.

00:15:38.020 But I map these poles onto the two responses to boredom, one being resignation and the despair

00:15:43.920 of possibility is when we encounter a boring situation, we just, we get out of it as fast

00:15:48.340 as possible.

00:15:49.120 We, uh, we run from it.

00:15:51.220 Okay.

00:15:51.660 Yeah.

00:15:51.880 I think we've all experienced the despair of necessity.

00:15:54.140 So if you're in a job that's monotonous, the despair of necessity, but then the despair

00:15:59.820 of possibility, right.

00:16:00.820 It's when you're getting on social media and you're flipping through Instagram thinking,

00:16:05.460 wow, that would be great to have this life, but you don't do anything to about it.

00:16:11.340 So it just stays in possibility and that can also lead to a weird type of boredom.

00:16:18.900 Yeah.

00:16:19.840 Well, it's, I think the despair of possibility is simply boredom avoidance.

00:16:23.740 Yeah.

00:16:24.240 So when scrolling through Facebook reels, I'm just sort of, it's a very pacifying activity

00:16:29.600 where I'm kind of lulled and I'm, I'm steering clear of, of, of boredom, but there's also

00:16:35.580 a certain despair quality to, at least I experienced that when I'm doing too much of that.

00:16:39.000 Right.

00:16:39.160 It's like, I, I, I could be that, but I can't or whatever.

00:16:42.860 Right.

00:16:43.300 Right.

00:16:43.900 Yeah.

00:16:44.200 Or even, even not, not even that I'm thinking of like, I was watching, uh, I was on Facebook

00:16:48.840 and you know, these dash cam accident videos.

00:16:51.460 Oh yeah.

00:16:52.120 It's just like, why am I so captivated by this?

00:16:55.640 And you can watch 20 of them in a row.

00:16:58.140 Yeah.

00:16:58.720 Yeah.

00:16:59.120 Okay.

00:16:59.320 So you've got the, uh, the spare of possibilities where you're just living vicariously through

00:17:04.780 looking at the possibilities other people are living, or it could even just be possibilities

00:17:09.420 in your imagination, but then you just don't take any action on them.

00:17:12.960 But then, you know what I, I think what you were talking about with the cars, looking at

00:17:17.580 cash dash cam cars, Augustine talked about this and he called it a curiosity toss, right?

00:17:22.840 Like humans have always had this tendency to try to relieve boredom by looking at any

00:17:29.360 kind of novelty.

00:17:30.480 Like, even if it was like gruesome, like in his confessions, he talked about back then

00:17:35.460 when he was, when he was living people looking at mangled corpses because it was just something

00:17:40.140 to do, right?

00:17:40.980 It was some kind of stimulation and we do the same thing, but now, you know, we just look

00:17:44.840 at dash cam videos.

00:17:46.800 Yep.

00:17:47.280 And that's essentially the news cycle, I think in many ways.

00:17:50.280 So, yeah.

00:17:51.240 So let's talk about how we can relieve this existential boredom.

00:17:54.460 So existential boredom, it's like a mood and it's closely related to depression, but you're

00:17:58.820 not depressed because you, when you're existentially bored, you still hold out hope that there is

00:18:03.560 possibility that you will feel meaning and be engaged with life.

00:18:08.920 So you mentioned Heidegger, he wrote a lot about boredom and he proposed a solution to existential

00:18:15.040 boredom.

00:18:15.720 What was his solution?

00:18:17.200 So he talks about, you know, many of us are living inauthentic lives and we're responding

00:18:25.600 to situational boredom and we're buying or getting the latest phone or we need to redo

00:18:31.540 our kitchen.

00:18:32.420 And so we're just sort of subsumed in the crowd and making decisions that are kind of on

00:18:38.300 the surface level, just avoiding situational boredom.

00:18:41.860 But there's a deeper existential boredom about meaning and purpose.

00:18:46.500 And it really is, you know, he said we're living inauthentic lives.

00:18:49.860 He characterizes it by chatter and curiosity in the sense that you mentioned, sort of a superficial

00:18:56.220 chatter that's just aimless and bantering about sports, politics in a constant rotation.

00:19:03.200 And a curiosity that is voyeuristic, that's just sort of aimlessly captivated by whatever's

00:19:08.600 happening.

00:19:09.500 And this is where he's drawing from Kierkegaard.

00:19:12.000 There really isn't an agency, a strong agency to think about, all right, who am I and how

00:19:16.840 should I live?

00:19:18.220 What possibilities are viable for me, given the necessities that I'm contending with, so

00:19:23.800 that we actually are choosing and making the choices ourselves rather than just sort of

00:19:28.040 going along with the crowd or with the flow.

00:19:30.680 And so that was the kind of authenticity that Heidegger was calling us to.

00:19:35.280 I'm critical of that version, though.

00:19:38.180 I think there's some problems with it.

00:19:40.000 Yeah.

00:19:40.060 What are those problems?

00:19:40.760 Why don't you think Heidegger's idea of authenticity is adequate to remedy existential

00:19:44.980 boredom?

00:19:46.560 And so to be fair, I think the way Heidegger's idea has been picked up, I think Heidegger's

00:19:52.000 is far subtler than this.

00:19:53.340 And so I didn't want to go to war with Heidegger in my book.

00:19:55.360 And so I kind of slightly dodged.

00:19:57.040 But Charles Taylor talks about the ideal of authenticity being a really compelling ideal, that I need to

00:20:03.560 live my life.

00:20:05.460 And I think what it does is it places on us the burden of originality, that I need to

00:20:11.000 be distinct from other people.

00:20:13.760 And it also then, I think, keeps us from thinking about the wisdom of a tradition, whether it be a

00:20:20.720 religious tradition, or perhaps I'm the son of a carpenter, and I've got to be original, so I can't

00:20:26.400 just be a carpenter.

00:20:27.800 And you actually could be a carpenter.

00:20:29.320 Your grandfather was a carpenter, and there's something to that work or the religious tradition

00:20:33.740 that is part of your family.

00:20:35.420 And so I think with the burden of originality, it puts so much on the self for how to decide

00:20:41.720 how to live and what to live.

00:20:44.220 And I don't think that's the way, you know, we certainly aren't brought up that way.

00:20:47.360 We're brought up in a variety of traditions, and then as we grow, we're learning to critically

00:20:51.620 appraise those traditions, but also critically adopt those traditions.

00:20:55.240 And so this is where I think Heidegger would agree.

00:20:57.580 There's an authentic way of embracing tradition.

00:21:01.120 I wrote a paper called The Originality of Clichés.

00:21:04.020 And what I was getting at was that, you know, we think about a wisdom tradition, a Confucius

00:21:10.020 wisdom tradition, or the Proverbs.

00:21:11.740 There's sort of tried and true ways of living that I think are viable, compelling options.

00:21:19.000 And I think the ideal of authenticity, at least the way it can be constructed, can keep

00:21:22.880 those as seeming like viable options because you're being inauthentic.

00:21:27.740 Yeah, I agree with you.

00:21:28.800 The way that authenticity is described today or the way it's put out there, it's being

00:21:33.340 original.

00:21:34.300 Yeah.

00:21:34.440 But it's funny, you know, you watch people on social media trying to be their authentic

00:21:40.960 selves, but it ends up just looking like everyone else in the end, and it's superficial.

00:21:47.200 Yeah.

00:21:47.360 And I think if you try to take this authenticity idea to escape existential boredom, it kind

00:21:53.200 of, you create like a double bind for yourself.

00:21:54.600 So not only are you having to grapple with existential boredom, which can be, it's like a mood that

00:21:59.100 just makes you feel listless and just, you don't want to do anything, but then you have

00:22:04.720 to overcome the burden of creating an authentic self, which can be such a big project that

00:22:10.400 that can also be just debilitating and make you feel listless, like you don't even want

00:22:14.780 to try.

00:22:15.740 Yeah.

00:22:16.300 Yeah.

00:22:16.920 Yeah.

00:22:18.040 And to Heidegger's credit, I mean, just the phenomenology of boredom that he lays out,

00:22:21.940 he talks about situational boredom, but he talks about going to, he was going to some

00:22:26.480 cocktail parties and situationally it was very engaging, but then he has a moment when

00:22:30.880 he comes home later that night and he just, he just, it's almost like an epiphany.

00:22:36.000 He just realizes how boring it all was.

00:22:38.640 It's kind of like, if you read Salinger's Franny and Zoe, where she's at some gathering

00:22:42.880 in an Ivy league college and she's just bored by it.

00:22:45.260 And so I think there's actually something even prophetic about the boredom in those contexts

00:22:50.420 that is calling forth something, but it doesn't need to be, I need to create an original

00:22:56.460 self ex nihilo.

00:22:57.540 I, I, maybe I need to explore a tradition and get some guidance on how to live better.

00:23:02.820 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:23:08.980 And now back to the show.

00:23:11.060 Okay.

00:23:11.420 So if authenticity is not a great way to alleviate existential boredom, another way we relieve

00:23:17.860 existential boredom is through what we call in our modern world leisure.

00:23:22.000 But you argue that what we think of as leisure in the modern world is actually amusement.

00:23:27.720 And as you said, Aristotle talked about this, like what amusement is.

00:23:30.620 So what is amusement?

00:23:31.760 And then what can we learn about modern amusements from David Foster Wallace's essay about taking

00:23:38.560 a cruise?

00:23:39.820 Yeah.

00:23:40.440 I love that essay.

00:23:41.800 I actually did just recently go on a cruise and take issue a bit with David's characterization,

00:23:47.100 but my cruise was up the Alaskan passageway and the cruise that he was on, I think was

00:23:51.520 more like a carnival Caribbean cruise.

00:23:53.620 So very different experiences.

00:23:55.440 In that essay, he's really taking a close look at when we're pursuing amusement and a

00:24:00.660 cruise being kind of like a capstone amusement event where you've got everything, you've got

00:24:05.080 gambling, drinking, pools, screens, just everything all together over an extended period of time.

00:24:11.280 And he's kind of looking at himself and everyone around him, what is going on?

00:24:15.760 And the way he characterizes amusement is he really describes it as a state of relaxation

00:24:21.000 where we just do not have to do anything.

00:24:23.680 We don't have to make any decisions and we're totally pampered.

00:24:28.120 And he says, you know, when was the last time when you were totally pampered and didn't have to

00:24:31.640 make any decisions and all your needs were met?

00:24:33.300 And he said it was when you were in utero, you know?

00:24:35.560 And so the kind of the telos or the end of amusement is to be anesthetized, you know,

00:24:42.500 comfortable numbing.

00:24:44.560 And so he paints kind of an extreme picture, but I think there's something to that, that

00:24:48.420 in amusement, and I mentioned looking at dash cam, there's just a, I don't have to do anything.

00:24:54.300 It's just this passive checking out.

00:24:56.840 Sometimes it gets called vegging out, which, you know, it's striking that we call it vegging

00:25:01.200 out because when you think about someone as a vegetable, you know, their mental faculties

00:25:04.660 are just not operative.

00:25:06.740 And so leisure is not that.

00:25:08.900 And I found Wallace's account to be just a clear illustration of amusement.

00:25:14.260 And so in thinking about leisure, Aristotle says, no, there's something different than

00:25:17.620 amusement altogether.

00:25:19.660 Well, and it sounds like, I think Wallace made this point, is that pursuing amusement

00:25:23.800 to relieve existential boredom can actually increase our existential boredom even more.

00:25:29.640 Because as you said, you know, like the cruise is sort of the perfect example of amusement.

00:25:33.520 Everything's done for you.

00:25:35.800 But when that happens, you don't exercise your agency.

00:25:39.520 Right.

00:25:39.620 And so you just become this passive consumer and agency is what makes us feel alive.

00:25:44.360 It makes us feel engaged in the world.

00:25:46.040 But if you no longer have that, when you're being amused, you're just going to feel

00:25:49.840 existentially bored even more.

00:25:52.260 Yeah.

00:25:53.600 Yeah.

00:25:54.040 I think the paradox of alleviating situational boredom, we are exacerbating existential boredom.

00:26:00.480 Yeah.

00:26:01.480 And so, yeah, you can do all these different things like Heidegger talking about.

00:26:04.120 You can go to the dinners and the cocktail parties and you can have a great night, you

00:26:08.280 know, chit-chatting.

00:26:09.260 But then when you're done, you go to lay in bed at night and you're thinking, boy, I'm so

00:26:13.840 bored with life.

00:26:16.720 That's when the existential boredom sinks in.

00:26:19.220 Yeah.

00:26:19.240 Okay.

00:26:19.600 So authenticity, probably not going to help us relieve existential boredom.

00:26:24.580 Amusement, and there's nothing wrong with amusement.

00:26:27.060 Aristotle said amusement's fine, right?

00:26:28.840 It's a break from work.

00:26:30.180 It's okay to get on social media, you know, for 15 minutes, take a break from work.

00:26:34.900 It's okay to watch a football game, whatever, but it's not going to relieve existential boredom.

00:26:40.420 So he says leisure will.

00:26:42.860 So what is this ancient idea of leisure?

00:26:46.340 How is it different from amusement?

00:26:48.220 Yeah, so, I mean, you're right, Aristotle, and thank you for that point about amusement

00:26:53.780 is fine and a part of life.

00:26:56.680 And he describes amusement as a medicine, meaning that, you know, we should take it in prescribed

00:27:01.640 doses.

00:27:02.760 And the concern is that life is work and amusement, and that's it.

00:27:07.140 And so leisure and thinking about leisure and going back to the way we respond to boredom

00:27:12.380 is we avoid it or we resign ourselves to it.

00:27:15.300 But I argue that leisure is this middle way.

00:27:18.620 And also thinking with Aristotle, these mood states that come up, anger or fear, we can

00:27:23.840 overreact to them or underreact to them.

00:27:26.360 And in a similar way with boredom, we tend to, you know, avoid, avoid, avoid, or we just

00:27:30.960 resign ourselves to it.

00:27:32.960 Leisure is this middle way where we're engaging with agency.

00:27:36.400 And so it's a different way of being in the world.

00:27:40.080 And the simplest way to describe it is when we are having experiences that are characterized

00:27:45.880 by sustained attention.

00:27:47.620 The bored mind is easily distracted.

00:27:50.500 TSLA talked about we're distracted from distraction by distraction.

00:27:54.100 And so needing to push through the itch to be distracted.

00:27:57.940 So sustained attention and then appreciating the intrinsic value of something or an activity.

00:28:03.220 And it can be a whole number of things.

00:28:05.280 But what's key is our attention is sustained.

00:28:08.320 And so it's not the attention required of work where we're on and we're kind of, you

00:28:12.460 know, having to be responsible.

00:28:15.200 It's an in-between state, nor is it sort of the passive consumption of amusement.

00:28:20.760 Yeah.

00:28:21.540 And Aristotle said that the reason we work is so we can engage in leisure.

00:28:26.040 Like leisure is actually what we're here to do as humans, is engage in life in this leisurely

00:28:31.260 way.

00:28:31.600 How did other subsequent thinkers after Aristotle add to this idea of leisure?

00:28:39.340 Yeah.

00:28:39.540 So leisure is the purpose of work and amusement.

00:28:43.000 He holds it as the ultimate telos of a human being, like when we're engaging in leisure.

00:28:48.640 And in Aristotle, it's the contemplative life.

00:28:51.280 And there's a bit of a rarefied elitism in Aristotle where it seems like it's, you know,

00:28:56.120 professors who are philosophers or astronomers.

00:28:59.280 And I think there's some point to that.

00:29:02.960 I mean, basically saying is that when you are seeing the world and you're just in awe

00:29:08.680 and appreciating the intrinsic beauty of it.

00:29:11.000 But to be fair, that's not, you know, that's not unique to people who just study it.

00:29:17.220 G.K.

00:29:17.500 Chesterton has a wonderful quote that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.

00:29:21.540 And so leisure, as it evolves post-Aristotle, especially in monastic context, they're looking

00:29:28.780 at more ordinary, mundane ways where we appreciate the intrinsic value of an activity.

00:29:35.260 And it could be doing astronomy.

00:29:36.600 It could be reading Plato.

00:29:38.120 But it could also be working in the garden where you're just present to it.

00:29:43.040 It's sustaining your attention and you're experiencing the intrinsic value of it.

00:29:47.200 And so Joseph Pieper talks about leisure as characterized by this receptive kind of attention,

00:29:52.680 not a grasping kind of attention, nor a passive kind of voyeuristic consumer kind of attention.

00:29:59.800 Yeah, I think people have experienced that leisure state of mind when they're on a walk

00:30:05.480 in the woods, for example.

00:30:07.320 You're just walking and you're enjoying just walking.

00:30:10.360 And then as you're hiking in the woods, you just kind of receive things.

00:30:14.700 Like you're not actually looking for things in particular, but you start noticing things.

00:30:18.860 Or if you get in that flow state, right?

00:30:21.180 If you're doing a painting or working with your hands in your garage or even just playing

00:30:28.080 a sport.

00:30:28.460 Sometimes you experience that when you're playing a sport.

00:30:30.560 You get in that flow state where you just kind of, you forget yourself.

00:30:34.480 Yeah.

00:30:34.720 But then in the process of forgetting yourself, you actually feel the most alive.

00:30:40.300 Yeah.

00:30:40.840 And I think that can happen.

00:30:42.400 Unfortunately, with sports and music, they have become so competitive, needing to be in

00:30:48.920 the right travel soccer league, that kids really do miss the intrinsic value there is in

00:30:54.500 playing the game of soccer or football or tennis or playing violin.

00:30:58.720 And so all of these are kind of ordinary spaces where we can have leisure, but they can be kind

00:31:05.860 of corrupted by other external forces.

00:31:08.160 Yeah.

00:31:08.260 You can instrumentalize any of these leisurely activities.

00:31:10.660 That happens a lot.

00:31:11.380 Like you see this with people who start a YouTube channel about one of their passions, right?

00:31:16.740 Survival or crafting.

00:31:18.800 And they're just doing it because they just enjoy it and they want to share it with other

00:31:21.420 people.

00:31:21.780 But then it starts getting a lot of views and they're starting to make money from sharing.

00:31:26.940 And then instead of you doing it for the sake of just doing it for itself, you start doing

00:31:32.060 this stuff to develop a following and create a business.

00:31:35.560 And you no longer have a hobby or pastime anymore.

00:31:39.020 You've got a business.

00:31:40.580 Yeah.

00:31:41.500 Yeah.

00:31:41.740 And so you're approaching it now as work rather than as leisure.

00:31:45.080 And so you're bringing a different kind of attention to it in some ways.

00:31:48.980 Yeah.

00:31:49.460 So you talk about some thinkers who add to this idea of leisure and what we can do to develop

00:31:54.000 this leisurely point of view.

00:31:55.260 One of them is Alistair McIntyre, and he introduced this idea of practices.

00:32:00.580 What are practices and how do they help us develop the virtue of leisure?

00:32:05.920 Yeah.

00:32:06.080 So McIntyre, certainly drawing on Aristotle, he makes the distinction between intrinsic

00:32:10.940 goods versus extrinsic goods.

00:32:12.880 And so the intrinsic goods of playing a sport are just working with other players, just the

00:32:20.600 thrill of making a good pass in basketball.

00:32:23.180 Whether you make money or get any kind of accolades is extrinsic to the actual game itself.

00:32:28.900 And I think it's a helpful distinction to think about intrinsic value and the intrinsic

00:32:33.240 good of things that we're doing.

00:32:35.780 McIntyre, though, is looking at complex practices.

00:32:38.680 He would consider chess a practice, the game of chess, or carpentry, basically complex social

00:32:44.900 activities that have evolved over time and have a certain degree of complexity.

00:32:49.100 I think there are other kinds of practices, though, that he wouldn't count in his list

00:32:53.680 of practices.

00:32:54.440 But it's the key distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic goods that I think is theoretically

00:32:58.820 very helpful.

00:33:00.140 When you talk about broadening the idea of practices to beyond these complex things, you talk about

00:33:05.220 focal practices.

00:33:06.720 Yeah.

00:33:07.040 And focal practices could be anything.

00:33:09.000 It could be building a fire.

00:33:11.360 It could be cooking a meal.

00:33:12.880 It could be working on a puzzle with your kid.

00:33:15.780 Those very...

00:33:16.840 They can seem very mundane, but they can become practices that can help you develop the leisurely

00:33:22.480 outlook on life.

00:33:24.440 Yeah.

00:33:24.720 And that's Albert Borgman, a wonderful philosopher, studied Heidegger, a philosopher on technology,

00:33:30.160 just actually just passed away just this year.

00:33:33.140 But yeah, the word focal comes from the word hearth in the home, where the hearth, the fireplace

00:33:38.460 was literally the focal point.

00:33:41.380 And it required a lot of practices, you know, the cutting wood, the tending the fire.

00:33:45.540 It drew people together.

00:33:47.520 But he does.

00:33:48.120 He talks about walking, cooking.

00:33:50.120 These are very mundane practices.

00:33:51.660 A friend of mine invited me to go birding a year or so ago for three hours.

00:33:56.200 And the paradox is, you know, I'm offering these as the way out of situational existential

00:34:02.040 boredom.

00:34:02.560 But to the bored mind, these look boring.

00:34:05.360 And so to understand the intrinsic goods of these practices, we actually have to experience

00:34:11.840 it from the inside out.

00:34:13.780 So as an outsider looking in, I have to confess, when I was asked to go birding, I just thought,

00:34:18.620 oh, geez, I don't know if I want to go look at birds for three hours.

00:34:20.740 And that really is a reflection of my boredom proclivity.

00:34:25.180 I mean, I can have a propensity to be easily bored and have needed these kinds of focal

00:34:31.640 practices that, again, you know, direct and hold our attention to one thing over a prolonged

00:34:36.400 period of time.

00:34:37.740 Right.

00:34:37.960 If you're a parent, you experience that with your kid when they're like, I'm bored.

00:34:40.680 And you're like, well, paint a picture.

00:34:43.020 You know, you tell them to engage in a focal practice.

00:34:45.840 Right.

00:34:46.140 And they're like, oh, that's boring.

00:34:48.100 Yeah.

00:34:48.780 And so what you have to end up doing is you have to just, you have to do it with them.

00:34:52.820 And you talk about this, like one of the things you have to do in order to develop this leisurely

00:34:56.460 outlook on life where you can see these mundane practices being meaningful is sometimes you

00:35:02.980 need to be an apprentice.

00:35:04.160 Like you need to have someone just show you, like you had your friend show you how birding

00:35:09.520 can be really enjoyable.

00:35:11.000 You might need to have a friend to show you, well, here's how cooking can be enjoyable.

00:35:15.720 Here's how building this chair in your workshop can be, even though it might seem boring.

00:35:20.680 It's actually, once you get into it, it's actually great.

00:35:23.520 Yeah.

00:35:24.540 Yeah.

00:35:24.960 And so you have to confer a certain degree of trust, which is what an apprentice does.

00:35:28.760 I trust that this person knows something and I'm just going to be receptive to going

00:35:33.540 through this practice and seeing what comes up.

00:35:36.780 I often find this, my son is in scouts and so I've been going on camping trips and camping

00:35:41.480 is a lot like that where it's a lot of work and you're kind of like, why are we doing this?

00:35:46.720 Why are we, you know, putting ourselves through this?

00:35:49.140 But to experience the intrinsic goods, you know, it's only by going through it and trusting

00:35:54.500 the process and the guidance of a, of a, of a master, if you will.

00:35:59.260 Yeah.

00:35:59.740 Okay.

00:36:00.060 So if you're having that existential boredom and you want to inject some more meaning in

00:36:03.440 your life, but those things that you, that are proposed that can give you meaning, those

00:36:08.740 simple things, you just have to trust.

00:36:10.640 I'm going to just try it.

00:36:11.900 I'm going to take a leap of faith, a kick a guardian leap of faith and say, I'm going to

00:36:14.920 give it a trot and, and see, and, and do it like with all your heart.

00:36:19.060 Like, don't just kind of do it half way.

00:36:20.900 There's sometimes you do that where you're kind of like, well, I'll try, but I'm really not

00:36:24.360 going to try.

00:36:24.940 Um, you really have to give yourself to it.

00:36:27.600 Well, I think about it, like in the context of, you know, coming home from work, it's

00:36:30.980 been a long day and I just want to relax.

00:36:34.020 I want to watch something and I want to have a drink.

00:36:37.040 And so amusement is just so immediate and readily available.

00:36:41.460 I mean, it's just, you just, you know, push a button and you're getting amused.

00:36:45.340 A focal practice walking when it's 25 degrees outside is not sitting in a chair, drinking

00:36:52.120 a beer, watching a show.

00:36:53.540 And so the startup costs for a focal practice are much higher.

00:36:57.980 And Borgman talks about, there's like a moral threshold.

00:37:00.240 Like it takes more work to get dressed, to go outside, to walk for 45 minutes, but the

00:37:06.920 restorative impact of a walk versus watching a show.

00:37:11.080 And to be clear, we can do some show watching, but I think what happens is again, it's work

00:37:15.440 and all amusement work, all amusement.

00:37:17.020 And so we miss the restorative, the restoration that can come through, I think these wonderful

00:37:22.800 forms of leisure, but they do require more at the outset, but the rewards are greater

00:37:28.880 than the rewards we get from amusement.

00:37:31.560 Okay.

00:37:32.180 So first thing, if you want to adapt that leisurely outlook, become an apprentice, trust

00:37:36.260 the process that maybe this thing can give you meaning.

00:37:39.440 You also have the role of solitude and study in a leisurely life.

00:37:42.700 What does that look like?

00:37:44.320 Yeah.

00:37:44.540 So I, you know, years ago studied to be a Catholic priest and the second year was a monastic

00:37:52.320 year.

00:37:53.180 And once a month we had to spend a day in solitude and I was 23 years old.

00:37:59.600 And that's a pretty unusual thing, I think, for a 23 year old to do.

00:38:03.240 And it just became apparent to me.

00:38:05.220 And I was reading writers like Thomas Merton and Henry Nowen, just how distractible I was

00:38:10.540 and just how manipulated I realized I was by just a culture that is constantly trying to,

00:38:16.860 I think our economies are invested in us being bored so that we're buying things and

00:38:21.080 things are wearing out.

00:38:23.520 And so it really was through that time apart in solitude that I began to not just read about

00:38:29.620 it, but just recognize it in myself.

00:38:32.640 And so going back to Heidegger, the chatter of modern life, I do think solitude is a valuable

00:38:38.340 resource and underutilized resource.

00:38:40.680 And by solitude, meaning that you are completely unconnected.

00:38:43.700 You know, you're not in solitude with your phone because you're always ready to be distracted.

00:38:49.200 So I think that's key.

00:38:51.240 But again, back to the apprentice thing, I do think in living into these forms of leisure,

00:38:55.980 we need community.

00:38:57.120 We need support.

00:38:58.060 I mean, to say that I'm going to start doing these leisurely things solo, ex nihilo, is

00:39:03.880 kind of like that version of authenticity that puts too great a burden on you.

00:39:08.440 And so I think we do need support.

00:39:10.320 And then the solitude can be a great resource.

00:39:13.720 The distinction between study and curiosity that Augustine makes is curiosity is the voyeuristic,

00:39:19.440 rubbernecking kind of mind, you know, where we're just fascinated with the tragedies of 0.99

00:39:24.980 others or just the latest dash cam crash or whatever it is, where we're just kind of

00:39:30.300 drawn into sort of this curiosity.

00:39:33.340 The study is where we're protecting our attention and staying with one thing, making sure that

00:39:39.440 we set up a situation with some, even some guardrails to help us.

00:39:44.660 A simple example is, you know, I talk with my students about study versus curiosity.

00:39:49.360 You know, if you want to have a really good conversation with someone, you don't want to

00:39:51.800 go to Buffalo Wild Wings and have 50 TV screens around you.

00:39:55.780 That's curiosity.

00:39:56.600 Study requires being present to one thing.

00:40:01.320 Right.

00:40:01.840 And yeah, you can bring this approach to anything you do, whether it's writing a letter, washing

00:40:06.460 the dishes, cooking.

00:40:07.980 I had to, um, I'm replacing the basketball hoop in our driveway.

00:40:12.700 And so I had to take out the old one that's been there for since before we bought the house.

00:40:17.640 So I had to chisel it out with a jackhammer because it's like, it's embedded in the driveway.

00:40:22.180 Wow.

00:40:23.160 And, you know, people say, oh, it's a boring thing, but I was very engaged.

00:40:26.660 It took several hours to do, but I was just constantly thinking like, well, how can I use

00:40:31.900 this jackhammer in a more, an efficient, effective way so I can get more chunks of concrete?

00:40:36.380 Like I was taking a studious approach to it and I, it looked like, uh, you know, just tedious

00:40:42.600 labor, but I actually enjoyed it.

00:40:44.000 It was, it was nice.

00:40:45.740 Hmm.

00:40:46.480 That's a great example.

00:40:47.580 Um, uh, on the cover of the book is a painting by Vermeer, the milkmaid.

00:40:52.680 And what captivated me by it is it's a person who is just engaged in a, in a very receptive,

00:40:59.240 single-minded way with one task.

00:41:01.280 I can be so double-minded or multi-minded and trying to optimize and do three things at

00:41:07.240 once.

00:41:07.540 And so there's a combination of work, work amusement, but leisure is this innate, you

00:41:13.580 know, really giving yourself space to attend to one thing carefully.

00:41:18.340 Yeah.

00:41:18.860 And then you're opening yourself up to, I like, I like this idea of leisure as being open,

00:41:24.140 right?

00:41:24.560 You're with work.

00:41:26.080 You always got this goal in mind.

00:41:27.280 Like I got to do this one thing with leisure.

00:41:30.240 The goal is there's no goal.

00:41:31.720 Like you're just open to whatever new possibilities are there for you.

00:41:36.140 It's, it's an active passiveness.

00:41:37.960 It's hard to describe, but I know what you're talking about.

00:41:39.860 You do a really good job describing in the book.

00:41:42.380 Yeah.

00:41:42.560 And that's peeper where he talks about that active, passive.

00:41:45.320 And so work is predominantly active.

00:41:47.320 Amusement is predominantly passive.

00:41:48.840 Leisure is active, passive.

00:41:50.220 Yeah.

00:41:50.420 Thanks for, thanks for bringing that back to me.

00:41:52.480 Um, and thanks for reading the book, Brett.

00:41:53.900 You just really dived into it.

00:41:55.460 I'm really grateful.

00:41:56.240 Well, it's a great book.

00:41:57.180 So, okay.

00:41:57.660 Be an apprentice, trust the process, solitude, take an, uh, a studious approach to these leisurely

00:42:04.320 activities, even the most mundane things.

00:42:06.360 And then you talk about this idea of remembering epiphanies to cultivate leisure in our lives.

00:42:11.060 What do you mean by that?

00:42:13.140 Well, I'm borrowing from James Joyce and, uh, in portrait of an artist as a young man,

00:42:18.840 you know, there's these moments where Stephen Daedalus falls in love with poetry, with literature,

00:42:24.860 and just sees the beauty in, in things.

00:42:28.300 And these are epiphanies.

00:42:29.440 And we can think about, you know, I have a student who's a math major and they have epiphanies where

00:42:34.780 they just really fall in love with the beauty of this language.

00:42:38.200 And so we can, over time, we can forget those.

00:42:42.240 And having an epiphany, I think what we're experiencing is the intrinsic beauty of something.

00:42:46.820 And so it's really kind of this quintessential moment of beholding leisure, where you're

00:42:53.080 just taken up with something.

00:42:55.880 And so we can think about distinctive moments when we get into some kind of work or hobby,

00:43:01.140 like what was it that, that drew you in?

00:43:03.100 And we can, you know, perhaps remember it was this moment, this moment of seeing.

00:43:07.000 And so remembering those, I think is a way to help kind of reawaken our love for something.

00:43:12.260 I'm thinking about it also in the context of teaching, where teaching can be work that drains

00:43:16.820 us and burns us out.

00:43:18.740 And teachers, they do need that time, that restorative time to remember their epiphanies.

00:43:23.380 So they bring that back into the classroom because they're trying to awaken those in students as

00:43:27.420 well.

00:43:28.560 And if they've forgotten them, then it just becomes bureaucratic and loses its magic.

00:43:34.760 No, I've experienced the importance of remembering epiphanies and wanting to be more leisurely.

00:43:39.460 I experienced this whenever we host a dinner party at our house or sometimes get together

00:43:45.320 because it's like that, there's that threshold.

00:43:49.120 It's a high threshold to get over.

00:43:50.540 It's like, oh my gosh, it's a lot of work.

00:43:51.800 I got to go get the food.

00:43:54.060 And then you have to clean up and you just think about it like, I don't want to do this.

00:43:57.280 But then you do it.

00:43:58.680 And then afterwards you feel, man, that was great.

00:44:01.100 I'm so glad we did that.

00:44:02.140 Had such a great time, got to connect.

00:44:03.880 It was awesome.

00:44:04.420 And so whenever I catch myself doing the, I don't want to have this party, I have to

00:44:09.680 remember, wait, no, wait, last time we did this, you had a great time.

00:44:13.040 Yeah.

00:44:13.480 Or you do that with your kids when your kids want to do something that's like, oh, it

00:44:18.660 just seems, I don't want to do that.

00:44:20.180 It's like, no, last time I did, I felt great afterwards.

00:44:22.700 And so it'll help you give you that push over that threshold.

00:44:27.700 Yeah, no, that's a great example.

00:44:29.120 And I just had a dinner party a week ago and just lived that.

00:44:32.240 Yeah, so we've talked about these different things.

00:44:34.860 You can develop a leisurely approach to life.

00:44:36.680 It's an active, passive approach.

00:44:38.840 Maybe you do it with somebody else to help you get through that threshold, be engaged

00:44:43.480 with it, remember the times you enjoyed doing that activity.

00:44:46.700 But at the end you say the ground for leisure is love.

00:44:51.300 What do you mean by that?

00:44:53.840 Well, there are two things.

00:44:54.980 One, I was thinking about when I was visiting my grandmother in her last days and going to

00:44:59.220 the nursing home and nursing homes are bleak spaces.

00:45:03.460 I find them kind of boring.

00:45:04.540 You know, there's a TV on in every room and there's just a tedious, I don't know, despair

00:45:09.580 quality to it.

00:45:10.740 And I just remember feeling that when I was going to visit my grandmother.

00:45:14.520 But that mood state just really didn't have, it didn't matter.

00:45:19.240 You know, I mean, I loved my grandmother and I wanted to be with her.

00:45:22.760 And yet I was contending with boredom and it was my love for her that kind of overrode

00:45:28.700 that.

00:45:29.420 So boredom is the state that we're going to have to contend with.

00:45:32.080 I do think love is a greater force for contending with that.

00:45:36.840 I was also thinking about it in the context of the movie Groundhog Day, where the protagonist

00:45:41.240 is profoundly bored.

00:45:42.640 You know, he's stuck in the same day and it's repeating.

00:45:44.660 Initially, he's quite amused.

00:45:46.260 He's able to divert himself with all kinds of amusement, but that runs its course.

00:45:50.040 And then he's existentially bored.

00:45:51.300 He then develops focal practices.

00:45:54.260 He enjoys reading poetry, he's creating music, but it's not until he begins to see the other

00:46:01.000 people in the town and actually have love for them that he really solves the riddle of

00:46:07.120 existential boredom.

00:46:08.240 And so that's what I was thinking with there towards the end.

00:46:11.700 It's not as fully developed as I would like, but that's something for the next project that

00:46:15.480 I'm thinking about working on.

00:46:17.480 Yeah, I think that's, you talk about Kierkegaard even said that life is repetition.

00:46:21.300 And the key is if you have this love for Kierkegaard to be like the love of God, like even that

00:46:26.340 repetition doesn't feel old and stale.

00:46:29.940 It can actually be, it enlivens you, makes you feel like it's meaningful.

00:46:34.920 And your example of visiting your grandmother in the nursing home, that reminds me, I know

00:46:39.840 someone whose father is in the nursing home.

00:46:41.900 And one thing he does is he'll go and visit him and they'll watch this baseball game from

00:46:47.280 like the nineties over and over again, because it's something that his dad remembered and

00:46:52.620 they did together that they enjoyed.

00:46:54.500 And the experience is like really meaningful for this person because he gets to spend time

00:46:59.100 with his dad who's got some dementia.

00:47:00.620 They're doing this thing over and over again, but because love is there, it feels leisurely.

00:47:06.940 Yeah, that's wonderful.

00:47:08.520 I think about it also in the context of, you know, I've been married now for 20 years and

00:47:12.720 just the simple repetitions, you know, in, in, in married life where you're, you know,

00:47:17.140 checking in the end of the day or in the morning.

00:47:19.580 And, you know, to my bored 20 year old self, it looks like, wow, marriage looks like a

00:47:24.800 boring state.

00:47:25.420 I'm like, no, actually this is part of the beautiful leisure and love of relationship

00:47:29.420 that's, you know, gone through time.

00:47:32.520 Well, Kevin, this has been a great conversation.

00:47:34.040 Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:47:37.620 Sure.

00:47:38.100 So the book is on Amazon also with Cambridge press and I do have a website.

00:47:42.920 I've been giving talks at some universities, which is kevinhoodgary.com.

00:47:47.580 And so, yeah, I've been going around giving some talks and doing some retreats and yeah,

00:47:52.900 it's striking a chord.

00:47:53.780 I mean, there's a lot of work on boredom, but pairing it with leisure, I think is, is,

00:47:58.120 is not a new idea, but I think it's an idea that needs to be out there more.

00:48:02.000 Fantastic.

00:48:02.260 Well, Kevin Gary, thanks for your time.

00:48:03.500 It's been a pleasure.

00:48:04.640 Thank you, Brett.

00:48:06.380 My guest here is Kevin Hood.

00:48:07.540 Gary, he's the author of the book, why boredom matters.

00:48:09.780 It's available on amazon.com.

00:48:11.520 Check out our show notes at aom.is slash existential boredom.

00:48:14.260 We find links to resources.

00:48:15.540 We delve deeper into this topic.

00:48:17.580 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast.

00:48:26.800 Make sure to check out our website at artofmanless.com where you find our podcast archives,

00:48:30.520 as well as thousands of articles that we've written over the years about pretty much anything

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00:48:34.560 And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give

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00:48:44.740 As always, thank you for the continued support.

00:48:47.420 Until next time, I'm Brett McKay reminding you to listen to the AOM podcast, but put what

00:48:51.500 you've heard into action.

00:48:52.560 Thank you very much.

00:48:59.460 Thank you.

00:49:01.320 Thank you.

00:49:01.440 Thank you.

00:49:03.880 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - October 04, 2023

A Cure for Existential Boredom

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