 I got a comment saying quite simply that life is boring. And not just because video games are more fun, but just that life overall is boring. And I responded that, well, of course, in the pandemic, in the lockdown, it's understandable to feel a little bit extra bored because so much of what we normally can do is shut down. A commenter replied, nope, life is just generally boring. So it made me think, well, what is it that makes life boring? Because when I think about it, the world is an amazing place. The world is full of fascinating, wonderful things. It's amazing to be alive. What's going on with this universe, with existence, and all the detailed and incredible things going on at all times. So much going on. So much amazing. And yet, we all feel bored sometimes. Sometimes it just doesn't seem like there's anything interesting happening at all. And I'm considering some of the different possible ways that we can fall into this sense of boredom. And it seems like one of them is the idea of simply not having enough stimulation of our minds. So if you imagine being in a white room with no windows and just staring at a wall, you have nothing but a wall in front of you. I can imagine that you could easily be bored. And I've heard tales of prisoners who were in these kind of blank rooms, would sometimes start to even hallucinate images projected on the blank wall. Just because of the incredible boredom of being in this unstimulating environment. Of course, we could be in a stimulating environment and still be bored, maybe if there's just not enough going on inside our heads. So it's always one possible explanation is we're just not thinking about enough things. There's not enough going on inside our heads. We're looking for something outside to fill in the blank somehow. And sometimes in the case of meditation and this kind of introspection that sometimes is considered to be good to have that blankness. And we don't need to have heavy stimulation at all times. In fact, if we do, it becomes difficult even to do normal things if we're so used to high stimulation. But another cause of boredom that I'm seeing described often is the idea of not having control over what we do. And I think this is the most interesting cause of boredom that we can feel bored if we feel we have no choices in what we do. That our entire day is programmed for us and we're simply carrying on with it. We're going from step to step with no sense of being an agent, an actor, somebody who's able to make choices, to make meaningful decisions and take meaningful actions that will actually make a difference somehow in the result. If we feel like whatever we do, we cannot change the result of what we do. We cannot change the result of what we do. We cannot change the result of what we do. We cannot change the result of what we do. We cannot change the result of this day. This day will be exactly what it will be no matter what we do. You know, just have to go through my routine. Go through my routine work. Go through my routine chores and eating and then some routine entertainment at the end of the day and then back to my routine of sleeping so I can wake up tomorrow and do it all over again. If that's what we think of as our day, that has to be really boring. So somehow I think we need to have some way to make a meaningful choice in our day. We need to be able to do something even if it's just we just step outside and just go for a walk and see something new just so that this day is not an entirely routine day. Maybe that's what we need in order to break that attack of boredom. But on the other hand, it's also sometimes okay to just say it's okay to be bored. It's okay to not have excitement at every moment of the day. It's okay to be bored for a while and not feel like we're somehow failing and we have to correct it. So fine, be bored for a while. But if I'm feeling bored all the time, then that's something that I feel I need to break. I need to do something. I need to make a choice. I need to find some way to make a decision that affects my life. Hopefully not in some kind of disastrous way because it's easy to make disastrous decisions at any time and we can mess up our lives or others' lives at any moment easily if we make bad decisions. But just anything to turn things to make a twist on our lives. Do something different. Do something new. Even if the new thing happens to be boring too. Just to say that we have a choice and we have some power and some ability to decide the next step of our lives.