The Boring Life - And What To Do About It

"All great books contain boring portions, and all great lives have contained uninteresting stretches. [...] Kant is said never to have been more than ten miles from Koningsberg in all his life. Darwin, after going round the world, spent the whole of the rest of his life in his own house. Marx, after stirring up a few revolutions, decided to spend the remainder of his days in the British Museum." - Betrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

This fragment from Russell's book is about people's impatience to achieve things. Oftentimes, we are not happy with something in our current condition. Maybe it's the house, maybe it's the job or the relationship. One, two, or twenty things might not be going as we would like them to right now.

And we sometimes look at others with envy or imagine our ideal, or at least better, life and feel sad and frustrated. But we forget that things rarely change from one day to the other, and change will in no case be the result of sadness and frustration.

Sometimes getting to a better situation, whatever area of life it may concern, takes time. Little stepts, day by day. Persistance can achieve a lot of things, but it can take some time. A time that might seem boring, or monotonous, or uninteresting.

My favorite book is The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. It is a masterpiece, a superbly written book, and I'm going to say the following with the utmost respect: it can be painfully boring at times. Hesse goes into some very detailed descriptions and time seems to stand still for some portions of the book. But that's its pace and its beauty. Hesse is making his point, small steps at a time.

Uninteresting patches in life are inevitable and they are truly uninteresting only if you believe them so. Going from one adventure to another is tiring and can become a monotony in itself.

No one can live every day in excitement without becoming exhausted and, ultimately, bored and thirsty for more.

If you think your life is boring, think of all the great men and all the great books with their uninteresting stretches. The important thing is not to spend those times in self-pity, but in working towards a change for the better. And to enjoy the peace and quiet of every day.

There is no boring life. There is the choice to be bored and the choice to use the peace and quiet to do something constructive, every day, no matter how small, and to appreciate the calmness of things.

What kind of stretch are you going through right now?