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It Won't Always Be This Great

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Peter Mehlman

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“I was only ever truly loved once. Everyone has always treated me kindly. Even the most casual acquaintance has found it difficult to be rude or brusque or even cool to me. Sometimes with a little help from me, that kindness could - or at least might - have developed into love or affection. I've had neither the patience nor the concentration of mind to want to make the effort. When I first noticed this in myself - so little do we know ourselves - I attributed it to some shyness of the soul. But then I realised that this wasn't the case, it was an emotional tedium, different from the tedium of life; an impatience with the idea of associating myself with one continuous feeling, especially if that meant steeling myself to make some sustained effort. Why bother thought the unthinking part of me. I have enough subtlety, enough psychological sensitivity to know how, but the why has always escaped me. My weakness of will always began by being a weakness of the will even to have a will. The same happened with my emotions, my intelligence, my will itself, with everything in my life. But on the one occasion that malicious fate caused me to believe I loved someone and to recognise that I really was loved in return , it left me at first stunned and confused as if my number had come up on the lottery and I had won a huge amount of money in some inconvertible currency. Then, because I'm only human, I felt rather flattered. However, that most natural of emotions soon passed, to be overtaken by a feeling difficult to define but one in which tedium, humiliation and weariness predominated. A feeling of tedium as if fate had imposed on me a task to be carried out during some unfamiliar evening shift. As if a new duty - that of an awful reciprocity - were given to me, ironically, as a privilege over which I would have to toil, all the time thanking fate for it. As if the flaccid monotony of life were not enough to bear without superimposing on it the obligatory monotony of a definite feeling.”

LoveTedium
Book:The Book of Disquiet
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“2. The banality of time torments us, the tedium of existence mocks us, and many minor incidences irritate human beings. While we seek to inscribe a personal place in a finite realm, we live in a world without any actual boarders known as the universe. Human wastefulness, suffering, and cruelty know no bounds. Irrespective of all the unfortunate occasions in life that prove painful, stressful, sorrowful, or dreary, all misfortunate setbacks along with the shattering monotony of human existence are part of the vicissitudes of living a sentient life. If a person can view the enigmas of life from a detached perspective that respects life without worrying about the ultimate tragedy of all existence, when we return to the void from which we came, life will appear as a dream, a phantasm.”

Time PassingTediumHumanity Complexity
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“But it seems to Samuel that all the school is preparing them for is to sit quietly and fake that they're working. To feign the appearance of concentration when in fact they're checking sports scores or e-mail or watching videos or spacing out. And come to think of it, maybe this is the most important lesson the school could teach them about the American workplace: how to sit calmly a your desk and surf the internet and not go insane.”

TediumOffice WorkAmerican WorkplaceAmerican Office
Author:Nathan Hill, The Nix
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