Boredom in its stillness can be fatal for human beings. This statement is not derived from Kierkegaard’s words on boredom, but from the very own experience of mine. I started smoking on a day when I was waiting for a friend who did not show up until two hours after the meeting time. When one is waiting for something to happen in life, at the same time knowing that hope is the most fatal of all, life gets so boring that, that person finds herself going to the closest tobacco shop, buying a pack of cigarettes on which “smoking kills” is written in bold letters. The reason why I gave this example is that it is a very simple analogy to analyse the implications of Kierkegaard’s passage in question.
“So all people are boring… Idleness, it is usually said, is a root of all evil.” ‘Boring’ can describe a person who bores others as well as one who bores himself… how strange it is that those who don’t bore themselves usually bore others, while those who do bore themselves amuse others.” I will use the analogy above to personify Kierkegaard’s two kinds of boring people. In this analogy, the friend that I was waiting for is the one who bores others - in this case, me - in Kierkegaard’s words “the one who is busy in the world in one way or another”, as he was late to our meeting because he was too busy in life. Since I am the noble boring one, that I bore myself, I wait there until he comes thinking about time, life and why cell phones don't exist yet, while smoking. After thinking for two hours, I develop some ideas on the flow of life, which entertain him after I present them when he comes. Kierkegaard explains why I started smoking more aesthetically “The more profoundly they bore themselves, the more powerful a means of diversion they offer others, when boredom reaches its zenith, either by dying of boredom (the passive form) or (the active form) by shooting themselves out of curiosity.”
“So all people are boring… Idleness, it is usually said, is a root of all evil.” ‘Boring’ can describe a person who bores others as well as one who bores himself… how strange it is that those who don’t bore themselves usually bore others, while those who do bore themselves amuse others.” I will use the analogy above to personify Kierkegaard’s two kinds of boring people. In this analogy, the friend that I was waiting for is the one who bores others - in this case, me - in Kierkegaard’s words “the one who is busy in the world in one way or another”, as he was late to our meeting because he was too busy in life. Since I am the noble boring one, that I bore myself, I wait there until he comes thinking about time, life and why cell phones don't exist yet, while smoking. After thinking for two hours, I develop some ideas on the flow of life, which entertain him after I present them when he comes. Kierkegaard explains why I started smoking more aesthetically “The more profoundly they bore themselves, the more powerful a means of diversion they offer others, when boredom reaches its zenith, either by dying of boredom (the passive form) or (the active form) by shooting themselves out of curiosity.”
From a psychological perspective, boredom is defined to arise not for a lack of things to do but the inability to latch onto any specific activity. This definition brings in the discussion of idleness related to boredom in Kierkegaard’s essay. He rejects the common belief that ‘idleness is a root of all evil’ in the sense that being idle means doing nothing. Since boredom is related to action, there cannot be boredom in doing nothing. Here again, I refer to his aesthetic utterance “There is a kind of restless activity that keeps a person out of the world of spirit and puts him in a class with the animals, which from instinct must always be on the go.” In this context, he favors idleness and condemns boredom as the root of evil, because idleness is the liberation from the unattractive obligations, and creates the necessary space for the soul to vary itself.
Even though he favors idleness, he does not take it as an applicable solution to the problem of boredom because he claims that there are very few souls who can reunite with the divine in idleness. Therefore, he approaches the solution as other boring people do, calling out for change. This issue of change is a recurrent theme in his other essays in Either/Or as well. His critical point in the issue of change is that boring people are in need of change all the time without even considering the reason why they need it. It does not matter which persona of Kierkegaard's is criticising, aesthetic or ethical, he comes up with the same conclusion that change, for example in the form of travelling from place to place, is useless if the soul is not organised to achieve its aim. As he states in the first sentence of his essay, it is very sensible to start from a principle. So he starts from a principle in his search for change and suggests the method of ‘crop rotation’.
By using the phrase ‘crop rotation’ he gives an explanation to the general misunderstanding in the application of change. He clearly states that changing of soil will not resolve the problem, so what is required for change to work in the expected fruitful manner is to change the method of cultivation and type of grain. To do so, he introduces the resourceful rule of limitation through having control on remembering and forgetting. At this point the problem becomes a matter of art. An artistic way of living is presented as the solution to overcome the fatality of hope. The art of forgetting then becomes the key element in his search for the solution, as he puts it “Being able to forget depends always on how one remembers, but how one remembers depends in turn on how one experiences reality. The person who sticks fast in it with the momentum of hope will remember in a way that makes him unable to forget.” He also warns the reader against the threat of remembering poetically, which is a subtle line that one should not cross in order to keep the reins of joy.
The following discussion on friendship and marriage in the essay can be seen as a very well reasoned justification of him calling off his engagement with Regine Olsen. The important point in this discussion is its relation to the idleness of the soul. The previous discussion was on the idleness of the person that was described as the liberation from the unwanted actions. Idleness of the soul here refers to the liberation of the soul from any kind of socially forced engagement. He refers to those kind of engagements as joy-killers and potential causes of boredom. Therefore, he concludes that one should be arbitrary to constantly vary oneself.
I also believe that joy has a lot to do with allowing oneself the necessary space to vary one's soul through the unexpected, either in the form of idleness or let's say meditation rather than the hopeless loop of hope. This may seem paradoxical because being aware of the unexpected is kind of an expectation in itself, but with the unexpected, there is a story which has not been designed yet. Once again and for the last time I turn to Kierkegaard:
“To the arbitrariness within oneself there corresponds the accidental outside one. One should therefore always keep an eye open for the accidental, always be expeditus if anything should offer. The so-called social pleasures, for which one prepares eight of fourteen days in advance, have no great interest. Through accident, on the other hand, even the least significant thing can become a rich source of amusement.”
