The Role of Newness
The elusive light we all crave to have
“This is the curse of our age, even the strangest aberrations are no cure for boredom.”
~ Stendhal
Reflecting on boredom is an interesting experience. On the one hand, it’s easy to conceptualise boredom as having ‘a lack of interest’. On the other hand, reflecting on boredom can reveal that boredom often arises from simply not paying attention. This may be due to a lack of interest or any other story we choose to tell ourselves. Regardless, analysing boredom can give us useful insights into what we truly crave and desire, moment to moment. We humans may appear to be different on the outside, but deep inside, there is one thing that all of us crave. What specifically we crave might vary, how much we crave it also might vary; but we crave it all the same.
What is this elusive thing you might ask?
Sadly, it’s not something that can be bought or stolen. It’s not something that belongs to anyone, it’s not something that we can work towards. Rather, if we’re lucky we’ll be graced with it.
The unexpected.
The known
We have a funny relationship with certainty. There are areas of our lives where we rely on certainty to keep us going. The certainty that we’ll wake up the next day, that we’ll have a job to go to, food to eat, friends to hang out with, hobbies to pursue if we’re interesting enough, and a bed to sleep in at night before we do it all over again. Even within these individual activities, we rely on certainty. The certainty that when we wake up and get our morning routine underway, everything will be at its place…if we’re organised of course. The certainty that all things considered, we know what we’re supposed to do at our jobs. No two days will be entirely the same, but all things considered, we have a general idea of what to do. If we’re accustomed to working at a desk four days a week, we probably wouldn’t like to be told to do something completely obscure to us like going to a mine or cleaning weeds out of a garden. If these are extremes, then for some people, even being asked to open Microsoft Excel when all they’re used to is MS Word can be tedious.
Similarly, we like knowing how our favourite foods and drinks taste. The coffee we buy from our favourite cafe, and the takeout we get from our favourite restaurant, we thrive on the certainty that something will live up to our expectations - that it’ll taste familiar. We may have a favourite jacket or accessory we like to wear because we feel certain it’ll enhance our look in some way. We choose to hang out with our existing friends over meeting new people because of our perceived certainty that our friends won’t judge us. Our friends will listen to us and we’ll have a good time - we won’t have to put in much effort. These friendships are often the ones that last.
We’re surrounded by certainty, it helps us function. That said, certainty comes with a tradeoff.
It can make life boring.
The role of boredom
Boredom is powerful. There’s substance behind the quote: “An idle mind is a devil’s workshop.”
Keeping aside the things we do that are necessary for our survival, i.e. eat, sleep, work, etc., boredom is what drives us to do everything else. After all, sitting still doing absolutely nothing at all, is way easier said than done. Many people are more bored than they’d like to accept, they just don’t see it because of how they fill the gaps. As I mentioned earlier, we thrive on certainty and the known, it helps us function. That said, familiarity breeds contempt. While certainty, discipline, and routine all have their places and are undoubtedly important, the scales cannot be tipped just one way. The strictness of routine is what inevitably ends up making life boring.
An easy way to notice this is to reflect on why we love weekends so much. It’s not necessarily work-dependent. Even those who work seven days a week probably prefer weekends over weekdays. If it’s not work-dependent, then what is it? Consider the following:
Assume you work Monday to Friday and now the roles are about to be reversed. Instead of a 5-day work week, you now have a 2-day work week. In other words, you work Saturdays and Sundays and don’t work Monday to Friday with no significant difference in income.
If your eyes glowed up at the sound of this, then take a moment to reflect on it a bit further. Initially, you may have the time of your life during those five days of ‘free time’. You can travel around, hang out with friends, do whatever you want. When the weekend arrives, you work and stop thinking about it when you log off on Sunday. Note that this does not apply to entrepreneurs or business owners who work around the clock. For this point, we’ll stick to employees in a typical 9-5 role.
Getting paid to work two days a week sounds tempting, but when put into practice, those five days will also eventually start getting stale. Work keeps us ticking, regardless of whether or not we look at it as merely a means to an end. This is because deep down, we like breaking the chain. We like shifting from our routines. This is what makes our current weekends special. It’s not just the fact that we don’t have to work, but rather, the idea that we get to do something completely different to the rest of the five days. Two days where we may not have a fixed time to wake up and go to bed, a fixed routine to go to work and finish work, plans that we make on the spot, people that we meet serendipitously, you get the idea.
We often crave a life where we can do whatever we want without working - a life where money is not a constraint and we have the autonomy and freedom we do when we’re children growing up. We spend money on lottery tickets hoping for lady luck to blow us a kiss, we try saving up enough money to then spend it on one vacation, and so on. Once again, it’s not quite the activities we do that keep us engaged and away from boredom, it’s the fact that we’re doing something new from moment to moment. Social media is the best example of this. We open Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok and scroll mindlessly, sometimes ignoring potentially interesting content because our attention spans cannot support anything longer than 10 or even 5 seconds at a stretch. Is it any surprise that people nowadays don’t read as much or watch movies as much as they used to? After all, who’s got the ability to sit through two hours or sift through pages when you can just read the summaries online?
Newness in relationships
In our typical day-to-day activities, we most often don’t face the problem of boredom, simply because of how much we have to do during the week. We wake up, go to work, come back, and sleep. In between those, we may do some exercise, prepare food, watch some TV or do anything else that gives us momentary pleasure to pass the time.
Relationships, on the other hand, are where the problem of boredom can become more serious. Take for instance a couple who just started dating. In the initial phase of the relationship, everything goes well. They talk, hang out, and can’t get enough of each other. The reason this phase is called ‘the honeymoon phase’, is largely because of the associated newness within the new relationship. Two people who were previously unfamiliar with this new relationship dynamic are now able to explore life together - it’s new, it’s unexpected, it’s exciting.
Fast forward a few years let’s say and things start to become monotonous. On paper, their relationship seems to have grown and gotten stronger. They live together now, financially support each other, and spend most of their time in each other’s company. The same actions that once brought excitement are now expected behaviours that no longer feel special.
In all fairness, people do try to find ways to keep things fresh and spicy. As far as couples go, it’s inaccurate to generalise one pattern of behaviour that applies to all couples. Each relationship is different, and each couple has different ways in which they find joy. They are not, however, excluded from the principle of monotony. Boredom and monotony apply to all - the form may differ, and the time it takes to manifest may also differ.
Take, for instance, the role of love languages. Different people have different love languages. For some people, gifts and words of affirmation give them joy. For others, physical touch and quality time give them joy. Different actions are performed in different contexts to evoke a feeling of romance and excitement. However, notice the role of expectancy in any of these cases. Here are two scenarios:
Person 1 is feeling low and stressed out and comes home. Their partner, person 2, senses their feeling and provides them with whatever support they need - in this case, it’s a warm bowl of pasta and a blanket to snuggle into.
Person 1 is feeling low and stressed out and comes home. Person 2 greets Person 1 as they enter, but continues to do their thing, not sensing that something is wrong. Person 2 asks them for attention, shares how they’re feeling, and that they would love to have a warm bowl of pasta and a blanket to snuggle into. Upon hearing this, Person 1 gives them what they want.
The difference between both scenarios comes down to the unexpected. We appreciate things when we least expect them, or better yet, don’t expect them at all. Gifts during birthdays are another such example. Think about how you feel when you ask your loved ones for a gift, versus when they surprise you with the same gift. On one hand, there’s the unexpected, but on the other, it’s the idea that they know you and what you love. We often fail at doing this with our loved ones, which builds up to cause long-term rifts within relationships.
This brings to light the topic of infidelity. A 2024 study found that on average, 21% of men and women acknowledged having an affair with someone outside of their marriage. People may have a multitude of reasons why they feel the need to cheat. Sometimes, their needs may be unmet, sometimes they may feel emotionally or physically neglected, or other times, they might just be bored. This article is not about the ethics of infidelity. In most cases, cheating can be argued to be an unethical act, all things considered. If we take a step back and examine what might be going on in the mind of a cheater, it’s possible to notice desires that are not being fulfilled. More often than not, we tend to focus on tangible desires like money or sex. There are also intangible desires present such as emotional support, comfort, attention, and love. Amongst these, there is also a desire for newness - the unexpected.
On a fundamental level, cheating is the perfect example of humans giving in to their emotions over their reasoning. We’re not as rational as we’d like to believe, we are very much driven by our emotions and what better way to notice this is action than by observing cheating. From a third person’s perspective, cheating appears to be unethical, selfish, disrespectful, and something that warrants ostracising the cheater from their lives. From the cheater’s perspective, however, it’s something entirely different. It’s their way of accessing a new world with a new person, a new story filled with new experiences. The keyword here is new. The newness associated with cheating provides them with a temporary refuge from the monotonous routine of their lives, filled with duties and responsibilities and boredom. It’s them feeling like a kid all over again.
Once again, this is not the same as condoning cheating and sympathising with the cheater. Rather, it’s an opportunity to take a step back from judgment and empathise with the cheater, acknowledging what might potentially be causing them to behave in the way that they do.
The search and the find
So what can we do? If we as humans tend to fantasise about the new, what can we do to ensure we have a steady supply of newness in our lives? The first step is acknowledging our boredom and the role it plays in our lives. It’s okay to be bored and it’s okay to recognise that a majority of what we do is done to fill the gaps of boredom in our life. When it comes to relationships, reflecting on the duration of our relationships and areas in which we may have become complacent can also be a useful place to start. Are we taking our partner and/or loved ones for granted? Have we accepted their day-to-day behaviour to be the norm? Have we internalised the idea that no matter what we do, they’re going to be there for us? Conversely, are they doing the same to us? If the answer is yes, it might be worth having a conversation about boredom and monotony.
The solution of course is not simply to cheat and find excitement elsewhere. Rather, it’s possible to examine areas in which the excitement has faded and find ways to rekindle it once again. That said, nothing lasts forever. It would be irrational and unrealistic to assume that our relationships will always be exciting, that there will always be newness and the unexpected. However, with moderation, it’s possible to have a healthy mix of newness and consistency, familiar routines and unexpected experiences.
After all, we can’t appreciate one, without the other.
Morgan Housel sums up the first half as - The ultimate freedom that people want is - "The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want, is priceless. It is the highest dividend money pays". Boredom in this generation is non existent. There is only forced boredom from depleting our natural brain process with instant gratification every single day.