 | By Max Strasser International Editor, Opinion |
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Back in April, we had a lot of conversations in editorial meetings about how the pandemic and the lockdowns were transforming our daily lives. We talked about the ways Zoom was changing how we communicated with our friends and families, how our relationships with our partners and our children would be strained by staying at home and what kind of hobbies people might take up. (Bird watching? Baking? Gaming?) |
A lot of it was scary but all of it was new. And yet here we are five months later and it is boredom — the tedium of our much-constrained lives — that feels more relevant than hobbies or Zoom happy hours. |
That boredom is the subject of an Op-Ed that published this weekend by Richard A. Friedman, a contributing writer and a professor of clinical psychology. Richard asks whether the fears of an upsurge of pandemic-induced mental illness are warranted — or if we are confusing boredom with depression. “Many of my patients who have struggled with depression and anxiety have, surprisingly, not experienced flare-ups of their psychiatric illnesses over the course of the past few months,” he writes. “They do, however, say that they feel bored and frustrated. Lots of friends and colleagues, too, say that life has taken on a stultifying quality of sameness.” |
It’s not great to be bored, but it can be productive, Richard says. Freed from distractions, we can use this time to sit with our thoughts and think about what can make our lives more inherently interesting. That’s not necessarily as fun as baking or playing video games but it might be more important. |
How are you handling boredom these days? Do you feel like your life “has taken on a stultifying quality of sameness?” What are you doing to counteract the boredom — or are you finding it productive? Write in to opiniontoday@nytimes.com and let us know. We may include your answers in an upcoming newsletter. It’s good to remember that even if we’re bored, we’re not alone. |
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