to have a really low tolerance for people expressing boredom with their lives

[activate]

if it's boring you, do something about it

if you've got everything, do something for someone else

life is short folks and you never know what's round the corner

maybe not bored ,but dissatisfied with life ,fed up ..same thing really

maybe some of us have commitments to other people that prevent us from doing what we want

not so easy really is it

a run round the block won't change much

Fabby - sorry, a bit too far to visit you - will look out for you on different threads though (does that count ?).

yabu. and v patronising. its the sort of twaddle my dad spouts 'ohhh only boring people get bored'

before i passed my driving test and i was at home all the time i was intenesely bored. nbs - not that exciting!

so flame me

activate have you changed your parameters?

".........if you are suffering from an illness which keeps you housebound then how can you possibly think that a thread about people people expressing boredom with their life has anything at all to do with your personal situation. "

Sorry, I don't understand this.

Can you explain what you mean?

Maybe it's an age thing? like old, dying people are bound to be bored? yet young people have no excuse?

except young dying people?

Or young unwell people?

I spent many days as a TV reporter with dying children who were excessively bored and traumatised by being bored. And many days with ADHD children filming them being given ritalin for being bored. Maybe they were simply not allowed to be bored?

Lots of victims of DV also suffer from 'boredom' after the hyper-activity of being physically threatened or otherwise abused.

Bored seems to be a dirty word in this age.

Everyone is bored a lot.
The more you downsize it to being some mental deficiency the more bored people will lose the faith. Life is to be lived. Boring is living. My lovely Albert is testimony to that.

don't think it is the same thing sorry

I think boredom is a unique privilege of the western world - there was some hierarchy of needs wasn't there which said something if you're scrabbling to exist you don't have time for existential boredom (horrible paraphrase - probably wrong)

but boredom is very different from frustration, pain and anxiety

That's neat! Ragwort!

activate

Wow, thanks for that. If only i'd known that earlier.

so if you are not "privileged" to exist in the western world you are so gripped by frustration, pain and anxiety you have no time to experience boredom???

"I think boredom is a unique privilege of the western world "

haha - then you've obviously never lived in the 3rd world then - I heard "I'm bored with my life" plenty of times while living in such a country.

I think a lot of people use "bored" instead of "frustrated.........

This thread is turning a bit personal / nasty..........

FWIW, I think some people have an easy and convenient life, but might benefit from getting out more, doing more etc. For lots of other people it's not that easy eg due to poor health / old age etc. In my case, redundancy. Most of my friends work, but suddenly I don't feel part of their life. I know some people who are SAHM's and I'm happy to respect their choice, but it's not for me. So I do feel a bit bored during the week, especially as I'm wary of spending money when I'm not earning.

A bit unfair UA to imply that I have little understanding and intelligence. Do you not get annoyed when your dcs say that they are bored all the time?

I do listen to friends who come to me for advice but always complaining about about unfair life is and that you are somehow the victim of an unfair system is something that I don't quite understand. There is injustice and suffering in other parts of the world but boredom if I felt bored then I would do something about it.

whoops, the "boredom" in the last sentence was not necessary.

UA for what it's worth. I would have used the word frustrated in your post about children suffering from ADHD rather than bored.

I find people who seem to have a lot but complain that their life is boring because they don't have a partner or social life or other things that I consider trivial lacking in perspective.

Boredom is not the same as suffering.

"I think boredom is a unique privilege of the western world "

that you can even think such a backward, vile and uninformed thought.

Do you have a duvet? Soap? Tampax?

What is your idea of boredom?

Do you have any understanding of the grinding boredom of real poverty?

Boredom is NOT unique to the Western world. We know nothing of boredom.

Amazoniantwat

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

well maybe those friends have had shit thrown at them, in large quantities, life IS fucking unfair at times. And some poor sods get a container full of shit in one go, or delivered over a short space of time.

Often the complaining about the "little" things is them actually masking the big things........sometimes you just don't want everyone to know the big shit so you tell them the little shit instead.

Agree with UA ...poverty is hellishly boring.

ahh yes - Maslow - had forgotten about that - there's that other one as well, interlocking circles - well being in the middle, physical, social and emotional or something or other

My old flatmate used to use reusable sanitary pads, and would soak them in an old teapot in the bathroom overnight.

We called it The Kettle of Fish.

HTH.

I am busy most of the time.

I have 5 kids.

I don't drive.

I have little money.

I still manage to be bored with the mundane, day to day things that I have to do.

A good moan once in a while makes me feel a hell of a lot better. And Baroque had it spot on. Little stuff is way easier to moan about than all the other shit that gets thrown at you.

Okay.

Does say, being bored because you don't have anywhere to go this weekend compare to being "bored" because you are living in poverty.

You see, I wouldn't use the word bored in the second instance and would use a stronger term like frustrated.

An interesting definition of boredom

Boredom is a state of malaise, close to anxiety, characterized by a feeling of emptiness. Its origin is attributed to objects that the subject claims are boring, in other words, odious (inodiosus) in the etymological sense of the word.

Boredom (languor, neurasthenia) was one of the dark humors of ancient medicine (boredom was associated with the spleen, and melancholy, with the liver). It became the ailment of the era during the Romantic period, as typified by Françpois-René de Chateau-briand in René and The Genius of Christianity (part 2, book 3).

Sigmund Freud did not see boredom as a specific symptom. He noted that the idleness of young women created a state of reverie dissociated from reality and susceptible to hysteria (1895d). But he saw their lassitude as normal, since other objects cannot occupy the place of the primitive lost object, the penis (1910h). Sándor Ferenczi in "Névrose du dimanche" (1919/1974) saw a link between the development of anxiety and the absence of exterior censure associated with a need to work.

With the introduction of the notion of the withdrawal of libidinal cathexis, psychoanalysis provided significant insight into the concept of boredom. Without libidinal cathexis, one loses drive and an ability to make demands, except for a need for a change associated with a miraculous arrival of an object that would again give life to one's activities. This feeling of a loss of interest in things is, in fact, a loss of libido. Otto Fenichel assimilated boredom with a type of depersonalization in which the subject feels that he must do something but does not know what. Heinz Kohut pointed out the link between the analyst's boredom and the feeling of exclusion that the patient provokes in him by withdrawing emotionally. Ralph Greenson saw boredom as a defense against fantasy activity or as a result of one's unconscious perception of one's resistance.

The analysis of boredom reveals a kind of phobicobsessional fluctuation between withdrawal of libidinal cathexis and ardent desire driving impulsive acts that provide an outlet (Mijolla-Mellor, 1985). As with inhibition, boredom is not simply a lack of movement but a pointless stagnation, to which is added an enduring hatred of time. It is a defense against a phobic anxiety over a primary, but undifferentiated, investment in objects.

Read more: www.answers.com/topic/boredom#ixzz1HvY2G0cv

Doesnt being bored just mean something like wearied from repetitive and mundane tasks? I can see how some people would be trapped and unable to escape that.

And tedium would probably be a more apt description of well, the tedium of poverty.