Why Are Young Men Bored?--Part 2

What a Young Man Is Learning about Boredom

Sean Kelly has been having Aesthetic Realism consultations and also studies in the Learning to Like the World class given here. His parents are very grateful for the changes that are occurring in their son's life.

Mr. Kelly is an energetic young man, and we respect very much his seriousness in consultations. In one consultation, he told us that sometimes he felt very bored, and this concerned him. When we asked him why he thought this happened, he said: "Because I don't want to be interested."

Mr. Siegel said in a class: "The world is not interesting enough to most people. There are too many vacancies in it. Cats walk across the stage at the wrong time. Boredom is when too little happens, or too much."

We asked Sean Kelly "What are you interested in when you are bored?"

He didn't know. Robert Murphy demonstrated by looking bored, hugging himself and asking, "What am I interested in now?" Mr. Kelly, laughing, said "Yourself!"

TYM. Right. When you are bored, are you hugging yourself and saying "Go away everything!"?

SK. Yes! Sometimes I go to my bedroom and pull the covers over my head, and I sleep that way all night. When a young man makes a separate world in his mind--where he is the most important thing, where people don't bother him, where he doesn't have to listen or talk to anyone he doesn't want to--he can later punish himself by feeling both frightened and bored.

In the consultation, we asked Sean Kelly to look at a reproduction of this painting [SLIDE]--Vincent van Gogh's "Bedroom at Arles." "Wow!" he said.

TYM. What do you like about it?

SK. I like the way the floor looks--

TYM. Do you think he wanted us to feel that we are right inside? Boom! You're there!

SK. Yes!

TYM. So we have inside and outside--the opposites. Do you have an inside and outside?

SK. Yes, a brain.

TYM. Yes, in our minds are thoughts and feelings. Do we see the outside of a person, but a lot is going on inside?

"Yes," he said.

TYM. Do you sometimes hide what's going on inside?

Mr. Kelly was thoughtful. "Yes," he said. We asked: Do you think this painting is a beautiful relation of inside and outside?

SK. Yes, because the outside and the inside is here!

Mr. Kelly was visibly more composed and more excited as we looked at this painting, and pointed to the various objects in a 19th century bedroom in France--the window, the chairs, the way the floor is painted, the bed. He was seeing that the familiar world he had shut out, seen as tedious and boring, has variety, wonder, surprise--and that objects outside him have a relation to what is inside him. It is what every young man should be able to learn--what a young man I speak about now, Moshe Pergament, should have been able to learn all the 19 years of his life, as he lived on Long Island.

Continued: click here for part 3

Part 2
Aesthetic Realism Asks:
WHY ARE YOUNG MEN BORED?
By Jeffrey Carduner

Links to Aesthetic Realism Foundation

Part 2 Aesthetic Realism Asks: WHY ARE YOUNG MEN BORED? By Jeffrey Carduner

Links to Aesthetic Realism Foundation

Part 2
Aesthetic Realism Asks:
WHY ARE YOUNG MEN BORED?
By Jeffrey Carduner