III. AN INTOLERABLY BANAL, BLAND CONFESSION.

I have a confession to make. It’s an intolerably banal, bland confession—which is a large part of the problem. Here it is: I fear that I am a boring person. Sometimes I feel unexcited by the world. Unmoved. A lack of passion. I feel blank.

I actually don’t remember getting too bored as a kid. I was pretty shy. I was very scared of the ball. I played out out out out outfield. I had friends, but I don’t remember playing with my friends as much as I remember playing alone. I enjoyed challenging myself to a rousing game of Set. I loved competing against me in Scrabble. I liked to burrow under the covers, down to the foot of the bed, and become a chipmunk. I’d stare into the windows of the apartment building across the street. I liked to imagine the people who lived inside these rooms based on whatever little details I could spy—e.g. “Miss Rosie,” the gaudy-yet-forlorn spinster, whose apartment was papered in gaudy-yet-forlorn flower-print wallpaper and decked out with a small table and one chair.

I wish I could claim that child-me wrote a novella titled “Miss Rosie,” but I can’t—she didn’t. I was a fine student, and an unremarkable child. Probably the most remarkable thing about me was that I was a crybaby— I quivered up and bawled a ton, particularly over the fates of fictional characters: Jack Dawson, Old Yeller, the seaman of O Waly, Waly

At a certain point, being an introverted, unremarkable, overly sensitive Scrabble-lover no longer cut it. You reach a certain age, and relatives/guidance counselors/admissions officers/friends’ parents begin asking you what your passion is. I remember visiting a distant relative who asked me, What is your passion? Her question stressed me out immensely. I had interests, I liked things—was that not enough? I also enjoyed spacing out and not talking and not thinking about anything at all… at least not about anything that could be articulated…why wasn’t I more productive? Why did I get so blank?

As I moved through adolescence, having no articulated passion felt like a nagging worry…when I was applying to college, having no articulated passion felt like a real problem…by the time that college wound down, my seeming lack of enthusiasm!!/expertise!!/devotion!! toward a particular subject exploded into some huge existential crisis: How come everybody else around me is able to speak with such LOUD AUTHORITY and GRAND PASSION about things? Have I just been wasting my time spacing out? WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME?! Do I lack some fundamental PASSION that makes me unable to get PASSIONATE about LIFE?! What is worth getting passionate about? How do I become passionate?! Why can’t I find passion?!? Am I WASTING AWAY MY LIFE, not having found anything that has real MEANING? How do I get that real meaning? I FEEL FAR TOO REMOVED FROM THIS WORLD…I WANT IN AGAIN.

I began to dread moments where I might be letting my mind drift, and where I was feeling neutral, “nothing in particular.” (Moments that I basked in in childhood.) I identified moments where I wasn’t thinking “productive” thoughts as “boring” moments. This isn’t to say that I necessarily felt bored; rather, I felt anxious about being boring. I thought if I was not thinking a “productive” thought, then I should feel bored, and maybe I was doubly boring: so boring that I did not even recognize that I should be bored in these “boring” moments. I began to dread being alone with my own mind.

I do not remember anyone (other than myself) ever calling me out for being a bore—in retrospect, I probably had “productive” and “passionate” thoughts more often than I gave myself credit for. I’m my own harshest critic, and I let my anxiety over being “boring” take over. For better or for worse, I pinpoint the major experience that led me to stress-the-fuck-out over being “boring” to philosophy. I was a philosophy major at a hyper-academic university. Sadly, the discipline has a reputation for being pretty male-centric: While women today are entering more and more notoriously male fields, academic philosophy remains male-dominated. Talking about the discipline’s “woman problem” recently, my male philosophy buddy phrased it well: He grew up on the belief that, “If you don’t say, you don’t know.” I’d add very loudly to his statement. In other words: Philosophy kids tend to argue their points VERY LOUDLY AND AGGRESSIVELY AND SPEAK ABOUT THOSE BIG IDEAS AS IF THEY WERE DEFINITELY SURE THEY WERE ALWAYS RIGHT because, I guess, if ya don’t speak up, you’re hinting that ya don’t know…and that, God forbid, is the worst.

Now, now. I’m probably being unfair, and making caricatures. (Am I?) I’m just telling you how it—studying philosophy at college—felt to me. Scary. I felt timid, lonely, upset, stupid. Studying philosophy in this environment made me feel that my unwillingness to GET SUPER WORKED UP AND SCREAM MY OPINIONS ON THE BIGGEST IDEAS RE: THE HUMAN CONDITION, BEING, KNOWLEDGE indicated that I was, well, stupid (read: boring). I felt like my unwillingness to feel so sure and loud-mouthed meant that my mind was not working fast enough, that I was not passionate enough, not productive enough. And, because the philosopher-kings that I hung around seemed to enjoy debating about how philosophy was the highest discipline out there, my anxiety over being boring took on a mighty heavy weight. To be boring felt like the most damning trait. To be boring felt like a value judgment of the worst kind, as it implied that the boring person is living their life wrong, that they are wasting their life away, because they somehow have the wrong personality or attitude—they are born with a lack, and this is the worst kind of lack: It’s a lack of passion for living itself.

The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard captures that dreadful heavy mood of boredom in Either/Or, where the bored person suffers not from a lack of stimulation but a lack of meaning:

How dreadful boredom is—how dreadfully boring […] I lie prostrate, inert; the only thing I see is emptiness; the only thing I live on is emptiness, the only thing I move in is emptiness. I do not even suffer pain […] Pain itself has lost its refreshment for me. If I were offered all the glories of the world or all the torments of the world, one would move me no more than the other […] And what could divert me? Well, if I managed to see a faithfulness that withstood every ordeal, an enthusiasm that endured everything, a faith that moved mountains; if I were to become aware of an idea that joined the finite and the infinite.

If only I had a faith that moved mountains! If only I were to become aware of an idea that joined the finite and the infinite! Yes yes yes! I need that…a real, substantial, unbreakable something…but I can’t seem to muster up enough gusto to find it…how do I get it?