Pain and Boredom

Arthur Schopenhauer once said that human existence swings between two fundamental forms of suffering: pain and boredom. He described life as a pendulum swinging between the two.

Consider the new job you worked so hard to get. You finally achieve it, feel fulfilled for a moment, and a month later, the excitement begins to fade. When you’re yearning for love, you suffer; when you get it, you’re bored. You miss the chase. You suffer from no longer having a desire to suffer from.

All willing begins with a sense of lack or deficiency. We want something because we feel something is missing. Achieving it doesn't give lasting satisfaction; it simply removes that ache. But once that ache or discomfort disappears, boredom takes its place.

So how should we escape this circle? Well, it depends...

Perhaps you are someone who finds beauty in it. You enjoy the pursuit, the challenges, and having something to work toward. There is nothing wrong with that.

But perhaps you are tired of constantly wanting more. In that case, the answer may lie in loosening your attachment to desire and to the image you have built of yourself. The less you depend on external things to feel complete, the less power their absence has over you.

Perhaps the question is not how to get everything we want, but how to reach a point where we no longer need everything we want.