Such a Bore

Why Do I Find People Boring? Well I'm Glad You Asked.

People are, at their core, boring. Yes, I do intend to be quite so cynical, but I have my reasons. If we look at the definition of boring we see that it means not interesting or tedious. Now, interesting means “arousing curiosity or interest; holding or catching the attention” and tedious means “too long, slow, or dull: tiresome or monotonous.” Furthermore, interest is defined as “the state of wanting to know or learn about something or someone” �" essentially, boring means one elicits a state where the bored individual has no desire to learn more of a situation. You likely all knew this, but I prefer to lay out definitions to remove any ambiguity.

 

So, might I posit that most individuals fall into this category? I would. Now certainly one could argue that it is only me who finds the majority of individuals causing a state of boredom, but I would disagree. I would state that any who finds the majority of individuals interesting are likely dull themselves and need to fill themselves with any information to satiate their lack of ability to amuse themselves with their own person. But that is another argument. Back to this one.

 

What would make someone be interesting? That is to say what would cause an individual, just by being themselves, to force someone into a state of curiosity where they would definitely have a desire to know more of the individual? Simple. They must have developed a personality which is unique to themselves which could not have been thought of on the observer’s own ability without any input.

 

Allow me to explain: Most individuals met are beyond superficial and their personality often mimics others. There is a clear separation between the unique and average and the only ones which are not boring are those which diverge from the average into the positive. The only issue is that most would scream out that all individuals are unique and that in no way can two people be exactly the same.

 

Well, not exactly. Certainly they cannot all look the same (disregarding identical siblings). And no individuals, were every detail described about them, would be mirror images of another. But herein lies the issue: once all details are discovered do we finally see the distinction and separation from each other. People are only unique in the deeper details. Superficially, most are quite the same.

 

Superficiality has poisoned and pervaded nearly every single individual. Now, certainly one could cry out against me saying that upon meeting someone new I cannot expect them to immediately divulge all of their most intimate details which would, with certainty, elicit great interest. I entirely agree, which is my point. We have structured a society around superficiality covering up the individual, that the package is what matters, not the content.

 

But again, I concede that I cannot blame individuals for being privatized within themselves at first meeting. However, again, this is not my issue. If it were, I would soon enough conclude the paper and you could walk off and think me an arrogant fool (you likely will either way, but I don’t really care). The issue is the lack of originality in the packaging. People have become similar to different shipping companies: there are roughly three companies all with their own different box designs, but all of them, even across the companies, are roughly the same. Then, you have the rare exception of packages which are so very rarely seen or used as they often don’t fit what the contents require.

 

Hopefully that translated. The boxes themselves are thin are fickle, yet are all that are ever divulged on the surface. And while we have the rare, intermittent package that is different, the usual is the cookie cutter box. And while I may get excited when I open up the box and delve into what is different from package to package, I never receive any excitement for the box itself, only from the hopes of what I may find within the box.

 

Yet, time and again, the box never opens into what it should be carrying. All too often there is filling, packaging peanuts, and bubble wrap (though, the last one may actually be quite enjoyable). The point is, even when we get beyond the universal banality of the box, we have to sift through the disgusting, repetitive fillers within each box which are so similar in each container to the next.

 

So, what may I suggest to remedy this? Well, we all too often have personalities which are linear and, when linear, the progression is backwards. What would happen if the contents shaped the box? If everyone in their details shaped the box, would not each box be truly different? If we let who we were shape who we appeared to be, we would invariably be different from each other �" and that is interesting.