“Why is boredom painful? Shouldn’t it just be boring?” Adam S. Miller asks in his book The Gospel According to David Foster Wallace: Boredom & Addiction in an age of Distraction. In this conversation, Mallory and Diana spoke with Adam about boredom has to teach us, including in our relationships with other people. How does boredom impact the way we read and respond to others? How does our dread of being bored with someone shape our relationship decisions, especially around romantic relationships? What do we find on the other side of boredom, when we sit with it and avoid finding distractions?

The answer, according to Wallace, is that we learn to actually pay attention, and then the world opens up to us. Adam calls this a religious moment: its not the moment when “whoosh!—the magic happens and the world seems full of a pantheon of idols able to satisfy. It’s the moment when—fshzzt—the spell breaks, the credits roll, the lights come back up, and the world must be cared for, again, as just whatever it is.” When we can pay attention, we can finally just be with ourselves and others.

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