Boredom Series — Episode 7 | 10

In the 4th century, in the deserts of Egypt and Syria, men and women chose to withdraw from the world to contemplate it differently. They lived in cells, prayed, worked with their hands, and kept silent.

And yet, in the writings they left us, a remarkably modern complaint regularly returns: the inability to stay where they were, the desire to go elsewhere, a weariness of everything, and the feeling that time was endless.

They had a word for this. This word tells us a lot about what we are experiencing and what we no longer know how to name.

Acedia: the boredom that gnaws at the soul

The Greek word ἀκηδία (akêdia) literally means a lack of care, indifference. In the Christian monastic tradition, acedia is described with remarkable clinical precision.

A 4th-century monk, Evagrius Ponticus (what a name!), considered one of the West's first psychologists, painted a portrait of it that a contemporary psychiatrist would not have disowned: inexplicable weariness, inability to stay in one place, disgust with routine work, gazing out the window, wishing to be elsewhere, the feeling that days never end, and a longing for someone to arrive to break the emptiness.

What acedia refers to is not simply boredom in the common sense. It is a profound disaffection, an anesthesia of desire, an inability to be touched by what usually holds value.

In the original list of the "eight evil thoughts" compiled by Evagrius, acedia held a central place: it was seen as the noonday demon, the one that attacked monks in the middle of the day.

What is remarkable is that this tradition did not simply name acedia as a moral failing to be fought. It recognized it as a spiritual trial to be navigated with discernment, support, and a certain humility in the face of one's own vulnerability.

Buddhism and the impermanence of boredom

The Buddhist tradition approaches boredom from a different, yet converging, angle. One of the three fundamental characteristics of existence according to Buddhism is anicca: impermanence. Everything changes, nothing lasts.

Boredom, in this perspective, occurs when we resist this flow: when we want something to last when it is passing, or when we want something to end when it persists. Buddhist contemplative practice proposes to reverse this relationship: instead of fleeing from boredom or fighting it, it urges us to observe it. Treating it as an object of meditation... paying attention to it, noting its texture, its progression, and the resistance it arouses.

This approach aligns with what contemporary psychology calls distress tolerance: not the absence of discomfort, but the ability to go through it without reacting automatically.

Recent studies on boredom in meditation contexts confirm that experienced practitioners experience boredom differently. Not that they do not feel it, but they no longer get lost in it.

The crisis of meaning that boredom reveals

What contemplative traditions share is that they do not treat boredom as a problem of stimulation. They treat it as a problem of relationship. A relationship to oneself, to others, to meaning, and to time.

Clinical approaches tend to view boredom as a deficit: a deficit of dopamine, of stimulation, of engagement. Spiritual traditions view it instead as a rupture: something has broken in the subject's connection to what gives them value and meaning.

These two interpretations complement each other. A patient suffering from chronic boredom may not only suffer from a neurobiological difficulty in engaging. They also suffer, sometimes, from no longer knowing why they should engage.

This "why" cannot be treated with behavioral exercises alone. It requires a broader space for reflection that philosophy, spirituality, or a high-quality therapeutic relationship can offer.

What modernity has lost

The monastic tradition had a response to acedia: perseverance in routine effort, the support of the community, attention paid to the small things of daily life, and, paradoxically, the acceptance that emptiness is an experience in its own right, not a failure.

In our hyperconnected cultures, we have lost this ability to go through emptiness without erasing it.

→ We have lost the rituals that gave structure to idle times.

→ We have lost the communities that allowed us to name weariness without being ashamed of it.

→ We have replaced all of this with permanent stimulation that protects us from boredom but also protects us from ourselves.

The wisdom of contemplatives is not an invitation to monastic life. It is an invitation to rediscover a healthier relationship with emptiness: not to fill it impulsively, not to flee from it anxiously, but to learn to stand in it for as long as it lasts.

What this changes in practice

The boredom that arises in moments of silence (a walk without music, eating alone, an evening with no plans) is not always a problem to be solved. It can be an invitation to examine what, in ordinary life, has lost its flavor.

Contemplative practices (meditation, prayer, yoga, mindful walking) are not reserved for believers or initiates. They offer concrete tools to learn to stay with one's own internal states, at one's own pace.

If boredom is accompanied by a generalized loss of meaning, a feeling that nothing is worth anything anymore, or a deep disaffection with daily life, this may signal a depressive episode that warrants a consultation with a doctor or psychologist.

In conclusion

The desert monks did not have smartphones. But they had something we have lost: the time to experience their own emptiness, and the tradition to inhabit it.

What they teach us, fifteen centuries later, is that boredom is not a sign that something is missing from the outside. It is sometimes a sign that something is missing from within, and that this lack, if given a voice, can be the beginning of a question worth asking.

Next episode: Learning how to be bored: a practical guide