When 'Bored' Is the Name of Your Game

The French have the perfect word for it: ennui. It means 'boredom' but it also means so much more. The dictionary defines the word as meaning, "Listlessness and dissatisfaction resulting from lack of interest." I could add 'restless', 'irritable', and 'discontent.' The French term is also the source for our English word, 'annoyed.' Today, I'm going to offer you a little gem of understanding that I hope you'll take to heart: everybody experiences ennui from time to time; when ennui becomes a way of life, we call it 'midlife.'

I'm not a licensed psychologist: I can't diagnose and I can't prescribe; but I can observe — and I do. People experience ennui (they get bored) when life hands them disappointments. Right now, I'm not talking about the big disappointments: death of a loved one, failure of a business, catastrophic accident or illness. In healthy people, these types of things tend to trigger not only the grief response, but also a kind of rebelliousness where the individual musters his or her courage and refuses to succumb to misfortune, even on a tragic scale. No, ennui comes from a much more subtle kind of disappointment: one that sneaks in under the radar, masked by a kind of 'invisibility cloak' (like Harry Potter had) under the guise of success.

What recourse do you have when you get what you want, and you discover that it's not what you really wanted, after all? Have you ever heard of the Abilene paradox? It was observed by management expert Jerry B. Harvey in his article The Abilene Paradox and other Meditations on Management. Here's how he describes it in this book:

On a hot afternoon visiting in Coleman, Texas, the family is comfortably playing dominoes on a porch, until the father-in-law suggests that they take a trip to Abilene [53 miles north] for dinner. The wife says, "Sounds like a great idea." The husband, despite having reservations because the drive is long and hot, thinks that his preferences must be out-of-step with the group and says, "Sounds good to me. I just hope your mother wants to go." The mother-in-law then says, "Of course I want to go. I haven't been to Abilene in a long time."

The drive is hot, dusty, and long. When they arrive at the cafeteria, the food is as bad. They arrive back home four hours later, exhausted.

One of them dishonestly says, "It was a great trip, wasn't it." The mother-in-law says that, actually, she would rather have stayed home, but went along since the other three were so enthusiastic. The husband says, "I wasn't delighted to be doing what we were doing. I only went to satisfy the rest of you." The wife says, "I just went along to keep you happy. I would have had to be crazy to want to go out in the heat like that." The father-in-law then says that he only suggested it because he thought the others might be bored.

The group sits back, perplexed that they together decided to take a trip which none of them wanted. They each would have preferred to sit comfortably, but did not admit to it when they still had time to enjoy the afternoon.

Life as an adult (before the midlife transition), is chock full of the 'Abilene paradox'. It's in your midlife transition that your sense of ennui tips you off that you may be in Abilene. How does it feel to realize that you've put all your time and energy into building a life for yourself that you now realize you never really wanted at all? Is it any wonder that this realization (if you even allow it to become conscious) can cause you to go into a crisis? Neither denial, nor self-delusion, nor blame adequately address your discomfort, because, despite what you may claim outwardly, on the inside you know that you not only chose to pursue the road to Abilene, you worked really hard to get there. Now that you know how you got to where you are, isn't it time to revisit your core assumptions? Isn't it time to make another choice?