In Praise of Boredom
"But the message that our generation has disseminated into the broader culture isn’t this. It isn’t even conflicted. We’ve cast off the grousing of our elders and are teaching our children differently. We waste resources galore (in spite of our belated efforts to change), and, glued to our devices, playing video games, or checking the Daily Mail, we waste enormous amounts of time — even while pretending otherwise. I can’t tell you how many women I see buying bathing suits on their phones on the subway. But we persuade ourselves that this is a more substantive activity than having coffee with a friend: shopping while traveling, we’re multitasking! We worship purposefulness. To embark on an endeavor that has no clear aim — to amble through a city, or to spend an entire afternoon conversing in a restaurant, or to lie in bed and read a book chosen at random from the shelf, or to major in English literature, for that matter — has come to be seen as wasteful."
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