Too much of a good thing truck down with a bad case of sensory overload, people are desperate to fast-forward through life's boring bits, writes Hugh Mackay. It's enough to send a chill up the spine of any conscientious, committed, involved parent. After all the trouble and expense we've gone to to keep our children interested, entertained and above all stimulated, they have the hide to tell us they're bored. If I don't like something, it's boring simple as that.
People go to extraordinary lengths to avoid boredom.
You want to jog, but you find jogging boring, so you wear your Walkman and play self-improvement tapes while you jog. But if you simply sat in a room and played the same tapes, no doubt that would be boring. I recently saw a young woman eating her lunch in a city park. I hope the curried egg was able to fight its way through all that stimulation to make its own distinctive sensory impact. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that many of us are perpetually on the brink of boredom precisely because we are over-stimulated.