“There is a difference between being grateful and being gratified. A modern problem of privilege, to be sure, but a very real problem nonetheless. Most people will scoff that if you have the time to be bored, you can't complain, right? The rest of us have actual work to do! But chronic boredom doesn't come from not having anything to do: it comes from doing the wrong things. It comes from a fundamental lack of understanding of what you really want. Turns out, chronic boredom is actually an evolutionary response to destructive patterns. It's a signal designed to tell you to get the hell out of there, something doesn't feel right. Kids know this instinctively: anything even remotely boring, and they're out. But as adults, we've been taught to withstand. To persevere. To "keep calm and carry on." So we don't recognize the warning signal. We keep working for the wrong things.”