The Virtues of Boredom

Boredom is in many ways an emotion of absence. The absence of stimulation, of interest, of excitement. But as Mary Mann reveals in her new book, Yawn: Adventures in Boredom, what’s lacking when we feel bored is often something much deeper than entertainment. She writes about her “fear that there was no overarching purpose for my time,” how boredom can paper over feelings of powerlessness or meaninglessness. It’s easier to label that itchy sensation “boredom” than it is to consider the feeling one gets sometimes that the train of life is stopped on its tracks, that the narrative is going nowhere.

Feeling bored “doing work that didn’t mean anything to me in San Diego, a place I’d never meant to live,” Mann writes, “felt as if I’d slipped out of the role of protagonist in my own life, just fallen right out of the story altogether.”

Of course, we can’t be plucky protagonists every moment of every day; there have to be lulls in the story. And as Mann talks to soldiers bored with war, and artists bored with art, and many slices of the 70 percent of Americans who find their jobs boring, she loses some of the shame she feels in being bored. Maybe the need people feel to act out when they’re bored reveals something about what their lives are missing. Maybe monogamy doesn’t need to be “spiced up.” Maybe it’s not a crisis if things aren’t always interesting.

“It’s a pleasant surprise to be delighted by sameness,” she writes.

I spoke with Mann about what boredom really means, and