A Better Way For Dealing With The Everyday Boredom Of Life
How “acedia” is rusting us away, and what to do about it
“Well, isn’t there any way we can fix this?”
I looked at the fenders on the trailer eaten away by rust and didn’t sugar coat my answer. I replied, “The only thing you can do is just replace both fenders. They’re too far gone.” My customer’s reaction was to complain, but rust doesn’t care if you do.
It’s a reaction that feasts on iron-based metals, slowly chewing them apart, and spreading like a cancer. Water in the atmosphere and corrosive chemicals only speed up the deterioration. Unfortunately, this customer bathed the trailer in both: water and heavy bleach-based cleaning products.
At rust’s initial appearance, if he sanded the spot and coated it with specialized paint, he could have saved the metal. But once corrosion spreads, it’s too late. The rust will eat holes in the metal, taking away its structural integrity, and eventually making the corroded thing fall apart.
The human mind and soul can suffer a similar deterioration over time. I hear about it regularly. Likely you have as well, but haven’t put an exact phrase to describe it.
This human corrosion takes the form of a general dissatisfaction with life, lack of energy, and a disconnection from the world around the sufferer. While many know the term burn out, this malady is appropriately referred to as “rust-out.” According to Hannah Fox at Harper’s Bazaar:
“The hallmarks of rust-out are all-too familiar: feeling uninspired and uninterested, as a result of not enough stimulation and connection. It might manifest in a lack of impetus to tackle projects with the same energy, an irritation with colleagues, or just feeling that your day-to-day has become mundane.”
It’s more than boredom. In fact, some have referred to it as existential boredom, or Viktor Frankl’s existential vacuum. A certain lack of meaning sucks away our energy to embrace life, spreading throughout our structure, and slowly eating away at our core. Consider it human rust.
While we might be tempted to call this a new phenomenon of our present day, ancient monks spoke about it thousands of years ago. They even had a name for it: acedia.
Acedia: The Noonday Devil
Kelsey Kennedy in her article in Atlas Obscura, says in the third and fourth century, men and women in the early Christian church moved to the deserts of Egypt. These Desert Fathers and Mothers became monks. Their sparse surroundings and solitude were meant to help them focus and pray.
One of the monks, Evagrius of Pontius, put together a list of “eight principal vices,” which eventually became the seven deadly sins. Acedia was the last, and most troubling.
Its etymology is derived from the Greek and means a “lack of care.” For the monks, it was a certain fatigue that drove them from doing what they truly should be doing in that moment — prayer, self-reflection, and worship.
It not only took the form of laziness, but busyness that you performed intentionally to avoid doing what must be done. Kennedy mentions Evagrius called acedia “the last of the sins to conquer,” and only doing so would bring one closer to God.
Podcaster and priest Fr. Mike Schmitz says the monks recognized not everyone is affected by all the vices equally. So, for some, certain sins are easy to fend off. However, Fr. Schmitz says Evagrius believed acedia comes for us all with the same force.
Author Kevin Hood Gary, a professor of education and philosophy, during a recent interview on the AOM Podcast says the monks called acedia the “noonday devil,” because it happens “upon us in broad daylight.” Today we might say it slips in during our average daily grind.
Gary explains that over the years, acedia transformed and lost its base meaning. First to sloth, which points towards laziness. Then, to melancholy that matches better with depression, and eventually to boredom in our day.
But that existential boredom incapsulated in acedia is something larger. Simple stimulation won’t fix it. In fact, Gary thinks the only way to conquer acedia is with an old practice we’ve lost touch with: leisure.
Rediscovering The Concept Of Leisure
The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard believed people usually handle this acedia or existential boredom in two ways: accept it or avoid it. The former results in rust-out and the latter becomes our nonstop chase of amusement.
Unfortunately, our modern form of amusement is passive. We scroll social media feeds. In doing this, we take in a world which isn’t ours, and it becomes a type of distracting fantasy. This sedates us temporarily but makes our existential boredom worse.
Gary says the best remedy isn’t amusement, but leisure. While the first is passive, leisure requires active participation, thought, and effort. So, think of a hobby (martial arts, basketball, chess, carpentry, or writing) versus watching TV or scrolling through Facebook. Confucius said similar.
For instance, he made The Six Arts a core of his teaching for creating well-rounded citizens. It involved the following:
Rites / Etiquette (礼): Ceremony, community rituals, proper behavior
Music (乐): Not only the playing of instruments, but music theory
Archery (射): Traditional physical manipulation of the bow and the spiritual thought processes to hit the target
Charioteering (御): Combination of mental and physical skills, in addition to command and control of self and mount
Calligraphy (书): Art, writing, poetry, and thinking through a pen
Arithmetic (数): Higher thought through mathematics and sciences
These leisure activities embody a diverse set of skills, but each stress the practitioner, making them become actively involved. Likewise, the Japanese developed the concept of Dō.
Dō means “the way,” and is the suffix at the end of many hobbies, such as:
Kado (flower arranging — way of flowers)
Shodo (calligraphy — way of writing)
Kyudo (archery — way of the bow)
Kendo (fencing— way of the sword)
Shinto (the way of God)
So, the Japanese believed the lifelong pursuit of mind-body activities could create a better person or “polish the soul.”
They only had one stipulation. The activity you choose must strain your mind, body, and abilities. It must be challenging. Moreover, there’s one other positive about these methods of leisure.
Viktor Frankl, in Man’s Search For Meaning said one of the best ways to escape the pain of acedia or existential boredom is by being involved socially with others. Leisure helps here too. It not only returns your agency, but helps you meet and interact with others.
Consequently, leisure is like that specialized coating to combat rust. With that in mind, let’s recap.
Combating The Rust Of Acedia
“Boredom is an evil that is not to be estimated lightly. It can come in the end to real despair. The public authority takes precautions against it everywhere, as against other universal calamities.”
We tend to believe most of the troubles that affect humanity were suddenly created by modern society. But many have long roots. While we produce clever names — like rust-out — an inner corrosion has always been present in our species.
Early monks referred to it as acedia, existential philosophers called it existential boredom, while Viktor Frankl named it the existential vacuum.
Essentially, as routines are required to keep society moving, they’ll become mind-numbing, and cause us to build rust in our souls. Fortunately, we’re not destined to corrode. There is a way to cover the decay and protect our desire to live and thrive which doesn’t involve mindless amusement.
Freedom exists with leisure activities which can help us escape and refresh our minds. They can also give us the agency we feel is gone. While we’re inevitably prone to acedia, leisure is that method to polish the rust away from our soul.
In fact, I’m polishing now as I write this article.
So, if you want to find a better way of dealing with the boredom of life, find a hobby, art, or Dō of your choosing. Just make sure it’s a life-long and challenging pursuit.
-Originally posted on Medium 10/9/23