Boredom and Melancholy
/How can anyone be bored or melancholy?
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They often travel hand-in-hand. Two sour friends whose only consolation is each other. I’ve never been bored or melancholy. I can’t imagine it. They’re so many things to think about and do. The real problem is too little time to do it all. I’ll never read all the books I want to read. I’ll never write all essays that float around my mind. I’ll never learn all the things I want to learn. Every new day opens doors to new things to wonder about. How can anyone be bored or melancholy?
I suspect only boring people become melancholy.
Who says, “I’m bored”? Children say it often, so too do teenagers and empty-headed people of all ages. Melancholy follows. Nothing is interesting when you don’t know anything.
New information bounces around empty heads like flashing lights in an unoccupied cave. Nothing is perceived but spectacle - temporarily amusing, leading to nothing more than impatient desire for more spectacle. Nothing matters because there is no existing context for meaning; no previous knowledge for the light of new knowledge to illuminate further.
How boring, how often melancholy such people are. They’re not stupid. They’re self-absorbed. They’re used to other people waiting on them. They got into the habit of ignoring important things because they didn’t have to worry about important things. Somebody else took care of those matters for them. So from childhood to adulthood they thought only about themselves and foolish entertainment. Pointless amusement, after pointless amusement preempted brain-space where knowledge should have been accumulating.
Knowing builds upon knowing. Knowledge welcomes new knowledge. Ignorance sees only random events that mean nothing. Darkness follows when amusement substitutes for understanding. Amusement doesn’t last for long. It needs to be continually replaced with evermore more exciting surprises, handsprings, and explosions to keep life from being boring and melancholy. It’s a dead-end way of being.
There is always something new to learn. That’s the best amusement. Bob Dylan once sang, “He not busy being born is busy dying”.
The more you learn, the more interesting everything becomes. Learning expands the gray world of ignorance into an ever-expanding world of technicolor vibrance.
It’s endlessly interesting. Boredom and melancholy impossible. Doesn’t that sound good?
So, what do you think?
“That’s soooooooo booooooooring!
I thought as much.
By K. L. Shiplley
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