Human beings want not only to survive, but also to live. We long to experience life in all its vividness, with full, untrammelled emotion. Adults envy the open-hearted and open-minded explorations of children; seeing their joy and curiosity, we pine for our own lost capacity for wide-eyed wonder. Boredom, rooted in a fundamental discomfort with the self, is one of the least tolerable mental states.
