The Wisdom of Life: Pain and Boredom

“The most general view of life shows us that the two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.We may go further and say that the further we manage to get from one, the nearer we come to the other. Life, in fact, swings more or less violently between the two.Need and poverty produce pain, while a man who is more than comfortable is bored.So the lower classes fight an endless struggle with need, in other words with pain, while the upper classes carry on a constant and often desperate battle with boredom.

The true source of boredom is an empty mind: a constant hunger for excitement, for anything that will give the mind something to do.You can see it in the miserable pastimes people turn to, in their idea of conversation, and in the number of people who gossip on the doorstep or stare out of the window.It is mainly because of this inner emptiness that people go looking for company, entertainment, amusement and luxury of every kind, which lead many into waste and misery.

Nothing protects us so well against this misery as inner wealth, the wealth of the mind, because the greater it grows, the less room it leaves for boredom.The endless activity of thought, always finding new material in the self and in nature, refreshes the mind and lifts it far above the reach of boredom.But a lively mind also feels pain more sharply, because sensitivity to pain grows with the power of the mind.

So each person tends to guard most carefully against the kind of suffering he is most open to.The wise man will, above all, seek freedom from pain and trouble, quiet and leisure, and so a calm, modest life with as few encounters as possible.For the more a man has in himself, the less he will want from other people, and the less, indeed, other people can be to him.Unfortunately, a hundred fools together do not make one wise man.”