Latter-Day Boredom.

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 171, 7 April 1923, Page 13

Latter-Day Boredom.

“A Curious Joint in the Armour of Civilisation.”

—_ v OREDOM SHOWS A CURIOUS JOINT in the armour of civilisa- * “ i > tion, a strange Tent in the garment of culture and knowledge that we cast over our primitive nature,” writes Marjorie Bowen, || Jy the novelist, in the “Daily Chronicle.” / “It is unknown among simple people. The Tibetan monk,' sitting fifty years or so in his cell, turning a prayer wheel and sipping buttered tea; the wandering nomad in the uncharted wilds of the Himalayas, whose life shows no incident beyond sleeping and waking among desolate snows and an endless search for food; tho Esquimaux, in the dark solitudes of the Arctic circle; the Bedouins, in their eventless desert wastes; the African pigmies, in the untouched seclusion of their impenetrable forests. These people do not know boredom; they do not complain of their surroundings; tfiey do not endeavour to escape from them; they do not wander away, explore, lament, write books, invent new religions and beauty treatments, give lectures, evolve new fashions, commit suicide; they regard the rare passing traveller with amusement, curiosity, compassion or contempt, never with envy. “They are not bored. “But we? —the children of this so-called civilisation, with all our million

complex means of entertainment, of variety, or instruction, of novelty—we are often bored. “Are people bored because they are thwarted and living the wrong kind, of life, or because the present conditions of existence are a weight upon the spirit, or because the years pass so quickly and so few dreams are realised? One sees so much inertia without serenity, so much idleness without repose, yawns and nods instead of beauty sleep, mechanical amusements mechanically performed instead of spontaneous gaiety; 'it is only the unhappy who cry for perpetual entertainment, perpetual distraction; yet there is no entertainment, no distraction can cure unhappiness. “People forget this; they think they can press a button or turn a handle and alter the whole of their mental state; that some ready-made amusement contrived for commercial ends will really cure their disinterest in life; it is like doses of cream for a bilious attack—the nausea soon becomes intolerable. “No intelligent person need ba bored, and we are all more intelligent than we think; there is no more absorbing occupation than finding this out; working or playing, wo can do so. It is neither vanity nor pedantry to discover the immense possibilities in ourselves; anyone too stupid to find anything will be too stupid to be bored.”