Boredom

The Gods were bored, so they created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, so Eve was created… Adam was bored alone, then Adam and Eve were bored together; then Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored en famille, then the population of the world increased, and the people were bored en masse. To divert themselves, they conceived the idea of constructing a tower high enough to reach the heavens. The idea itself is as boring as the tower was high, and constitutes a terrible proof of how boredom had gained the upper hand.  – Kierkegaard

My summer has been another cycle of ‘getting and spending.’ Quite boring.

The student really knows how miserable will be that golden future which is supposed to make up for the shameful poverty of the present. In the face of that knowledge, he prefers to dote on the present and invent an imaginary prestige for himself. After all, there will be no magical compensation for present drabness: tomorrow will be like yesterday, lighting these fools the way to dusty death. Not unnaturally he takes refuge in an unreal present.The student is a stoic slave: the more chains authority heaps upon him, the freer he is in fantasy. He shares with his new family, the University, a belief in a curious kind of autonomy. Real independence, apparently, lies in a direct subservience to the two most powerful systems of social control: the family and the State.