The urge for an occupation is as much a a desire for money as it is for a way to live a worthwhile life.
Only while having a job are vacations enjoyable.
Idleness, or having nothing to do, is a great affront to one's idea that life is something precious and one should live and experience each day.
Better to pretend that what one is occupied in is a meaningful activity than to face the absurdity of life.
The mind can conjure up circumstances where what it wants to do seems a compulsion. It can bring in needs and desires so that to have a job seems a necessity.
Having no demands from anyone, no expectations from anyone, seems to be a cherished ideal for man; but it is a fearsome situation when it actually presents itself. The mind not getting immersed in anything, and reflecting on itself, is not a very pleasant phenomenon.
Religion and meditation is a way of expurgating the visions and experiences which have led to knots in one's mind. But what if one is not having any new experiences? One holds on to the old knots, and meditation also becomes fearful.
Sensory input is what experience in life is all about. Not to experience varied sensory input is to be bored. It is therefore that munching something, listening to music, reading the newspaper, etc. are far preferable to sitting by oneself, listening to the idle chatter of the mind, which slowly dies away if observed choicelessly.
Consciousness is hungry for distraction.
In a suitably pleasant occupation, the mind is immersed and therefore silent. Is it this silence that we all seek?
Observe the mind while travelling in a bus when the destination is still many hours away. Observe what the mind feeds on.
One can make plans for a free weekend, but plans for an eternity? What a chore it is to think about what to do today, when I know I have to invent some new occupation tomorrow.
Media is concentrated input for the mind. In the absence of the media, say in the 15th century, would the boredom have been more deep?
The boredom of the modern man is shallow but more insistent.
Nothing interests me deeply because I want something to hold my interest for eternity. Transience has lost its charm for me. I live with death. As clouds that form and scatter away, the images in the world seem so fleeting and inconsequential.
Is the human life a preparation for the eternal void that lies beyond?
Living in the Present is Living in the Eternal.