On Boredom

When I was younger, I was intrigued by Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation,” he asserted that as humans, we are motivated by a set of five needs, in order of importance. We only get motivated by the next level need if the one before is satisfied. The five needs, in their chronological order, are “physiological”, “safety”, “belonging and love”, “esteem”, “self-actualization”, and “self-transcendence.” The goal of Maslow’s Theory is to attain this top level. I have also read somewhere that at a later stage in his life, Maslow extended the idea to include  “innate curiosity”, but I think the original idea is still powerful and complete.

I have also read online, which I wasn’t aware before, that Maslow studied what he called ‘exemplary people’ rather than mentally ill or neurotic people, believing that “the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy.” Maslow studied the healthiest 1% of the college student population [5].

This hierarchy of needs always impressed me, and made me think that it well described how ‘we’ (the healthy individual, apparently) get motivated to do what we do. So for example, why in a younger age I obsessed about a financially secure position so I could buy a house, in an area I will feel safe in, and then my focus was about getting friends that I love hanging around with, followed by a partner I would like to raise a family with, then a career that will justify all the long and difficult University years and make me appreciate who and what I am and have achieved (and yes, I am one of those that think that they pay you for how much they think you are worth, sorry), which in more recent years lead me to focus on having children and realising myself as an adult who is mature and round enough of personality to accompany another human being into this world. Still stuck on that one I’m afraid, but ‘self transcendence’ as a next stop is about the only positive thing I can imagine to look forward to as I get older.

Saying that, I think Maslow had one major oversight. The modern Western world. The world where everything we need is there for the taking, we just need to have a little bit of motivation, focus and self control to reach for it. What I think Maslow is missing in this context, is a motivational need that is entwined in all other five. And that is boredom.

Yes, boredom. Think about this. You are sitting in your nice comfortable house, heated or cooled as you wish, all your basic needs catered for, from running clear water, clean toilets, light, and an ultra HD 55” TV. What happens at that stage? Yes, you may be looking for a job, maybe a partner to live with, perhaps even get pregnant, but all of these thoughts are almost secondary. In that island of yours, your living room, you will probably do and say things that will not promote you in any way, or make your life more complete. You will do them just because there is a vacuum. Because you can. Perhaps a radical example is couples splitting up because one of them decided to hook up with an old Facebook friend they just reconnected with. Perhaps selling your car for a new one you don’t really need or want, but hey, it’s something to do. Perhaps it is allowing yourself to ponder back about your life and all the things you should or could have done, ‘if you only knew that…’ and then feel sorry for the choices you made. Perhaps it is why some people focus on themselves and obsess about their health niggles, and how they are scared, depressed, weak, unable, to live this life to the full.

Would Maslow agree? Probably not. I guess him dealing with the cream of society did not include the rest of us. But I think, maybe the whole reason he came up with this hierarchy is because there was nothing good on the telly.

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The Power of Goodbye

‘Eveline’ is one of the shortest stories that make up the Irish author’s James Joyce collection of short stories called Dubliners (1914).

I always remembered Eveline as a powerful story about what happens when you do not say goodbye, where goodbye is needed.

Eveline is a young woman living in Dublin with her dad, her mother dead. Dreaming of a better life beyond the shores of Ireland, she plans to elope with Frank, a sailor who is her secret lover and start a new life in Argentina. Eveline is responsible for the running of the poor household, overshadowed by a drunk and abusive father. Eveline herself works in a shop. Eveline is tired of this life, and so she and Frank book onto a ship leaving for Argentina. But as she is just about to board the ship, Eveline gets scared “She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition”, leaving Frank to board the ship alone.

For me, the essence of the story is that Eveline cannot say goodbye to her sad life in Ireland, to her abusive father, and sense of meaning and identity which is based on negative experiences. I have carried that image in my head for almost twenty years now.

I don’t think many of us think about the importance of saying goodbye. Of course we all know that at certain points in our lives we need to let go of someone or something, but usually this process can become quite painful and scarring.

I think we need to reconsider. I think that we need to reframe the sadness and pain that can come with goodbye, to make life bigger rather than smaller. When goodbyes happen, I think, many times we see it as life limiting, and life denying, sucking the colour and music away from the simplest daily actions such as brushing our teeth or taking the bin out. It all becomes a drag, heavy, and sad. Why? I guess because the person or thing that we needed to part from was a big part of our lives. Of the way we defined ourselves, the way out memories built an identity, a secure port we sail to when our life is out of balance. This person or thing was probably associated with laughter and a sense of belonging, something or someone that made us think we know who we are.

Consider a father that needs to let their child go in a divorce. A wife seeing her husband fading away to a terminal disease, a pretty woman losing her looks to age, a hard working man losing his house to the bank, a kid losing their beloved pet. The list goes on forever. How can anyone come to them and even hint that this is a life empowering moment rather than a devastating distortion in how things should have been?

They cannot. But what can happen, is that once the pain and grieving is weakened, sadness should start getting replaced with power.

The power to say goodbye, the power to know that what you have experienced is wrong, and unfair, and cruel, and say OK, but there was no other way for it to be, and I am still here, is the power of goodbye. The power to realise that if anything was different, or happend in any other way, then it would not be the you that is now, but some other parallel you, that might as well be a different person. The power to know that if you do not say goodbye, you will not be bringing the object of desire back into your life or existence, but rather get sucked into that dark place in yourself which is removed from the real world.

The power to say goodbye is one of the most important super powers a human can ever possess. Goodbye is not a bad thing, it is acceptance that a situation has changed, and amicably, parties go their separate ways. There is an element of control, as the goodbye is given, there is choice. It is not storming away, running scared, it is kindly, admitting that the end of that relationship or part of our lives is finished.

I think if there is one thing we can embrace about the power of goodbye, is do it with a smile. A genuine smile. A smile because it that split second, when your heart is breaking into pieces, you stop and breath. And you say to yourself, no, I will not let this event destroy me, I will use this event to summarise all the good things that have happened with this individual or thing until this point in my life. I choose to make this moment about joy and completeness, and acceptance, and not about the darkness.

This split second decision to cry or to smile, I think, will have a long lasting impact on the rest of our lives, when we look back at it. If we want to carry on the journey of life, if we want to take part in the next day, then creating events that suck all of our energy away and paint the world black will work against us. So the power of goodbye, is the path to meeting something or someone else in the future. It’s life.

Eveline did say goodbye, but she said goodbye to her own happiness and self realisation instead to her abusive father and unfulfilling existence. If we do not learn how to say goodbye, we put ourselves in even a greater danger of saying all the wrong ones.

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