Is Wisdom Boring II?

(A Longer, More Tiresome, Possibly Wiser Meditation than its predecessor; Is Wisdom Boring?)

I keep circling this question like a dog sniffing at something suspicious on the sidewalk: Is wisdom boring? I’m not asking it rhetorically. I’m not trying to be clever. I’m genuinely trying to figure out whether the thing I’ve spent so much of my life pursuing — good sense, clarity, perspective, whatever you want to call it — is, in the end, just a more respectable form of boredom. A kind of spiritual “opaque couché.” A life lived in grayscale rather than neon.

Let me start with a simple definition. For the purposes of this essay, wisdom is “good sense.” Not mystical enlightenment, not divine revelation, not some guru’s cryptic pronouncements about the nature of the cosmos. Just good sense. The kind of thing your grandmother might have told you while stirring soup. Don’t touch the stove. Don’t jump off the cliff. Don’t date someone who screams at waiters. Good sense.

And yet, even this simple definition immediately gets tangled. If someone wants to jump off a cliff because they’re suicidal, is it “good sense” for them to jump? Or is “good sense” the very thing that would prevent them from wanting to jump in the first place? The moment you try to pin wisdom down, it squirms. It refuses to be reduced to a single action or rule. It’s more like a direction of movement — away from chaos, toward coherence. Away from impulse, toward intention. Away from self-destruction, toward something like flourishing.

But here’s the problem: flourishing, when described by the wise, often sounds suspiciously like boredom.

Take the Tao Te Ching, for example. It whispers its little aphorisms like a cosmic librarian:

• Embrace simplicity.
• Put others first.
• Desire little.

I can practically hear the yawning. Embrace simplicity? Really? In a world where I can access an infinite buffet of stimulation — porn, drugs, social media, noise, novelty, distraction — I’m supposed to get excited about simplicity? About being “unadorned”? About restraining myself? It feels like being told to eat plain oatmeal while the rest of the world is at an all-you-can-eat dessert bar.

And “put others first”? Come on. I barely put myself first successfully. Half the time I can’t even manage to put my socks on first. And “desire little”? That’s practically an insult to the human condition. Desire is the engine of everything — art, sex, ambition, exploration, even the pursuit of wisdom itself. Without desire, we’d all just lie on the floor like abandoned marionettes.

So yes, on the surface, wisdom looks boring. It looks like the opposite of excitement. It looks like the opposite of the things that make life feel vivid and electric. And if I’m being honest, there’s a part of me that resents that. A part of me that wants to say: screw wisdom. Give me the chaos. Give me the thrill. Give me the dopamine-soaked carnival of modern life. Let me gorge myself on stimulation until my brain melts into a puddle of happy chemicals.

But then I look around.

I look at the world that claims to be living in the “best time in human history.” The world that has more entertainment, more convenience, more pleasure, more access, more everything than any generation before it. And what do I see? Anxiety. Depression. Loneliness. People numbing themselves with substances, screens, noise. People who can’t sit alone in a room for five minutes without reaching for their phones like they’re life rafts. People who are overstimulated to the point of spiritual paralysis.

If this is excitement, it’s a strange kind. A kind that leaves people hollowed out rather than fulfilled.

So maybe the question isn’t “Is wisdom boring?” Maybe the question is “Is excitement overrated?”

Because the kind of excitement we’re talking about — the porn, the drugs, the endless scrolling, the frantic pursuit of novelty — doesn’t actually feel like excitement after a while. It feels like compulsion. It feels like being dragged around by your own nervous system. It feels like being a puppet whose strings are pulled by algorithms and impulses rather than by anything resembling choice.

And that’s where wisdom starts to look less like boredom and more like freedom.

Wisdom, in its simplest form, is the ability to choose your life rather than be swept along by it. It’s the ability to say no to the things that feel good in the moment but hollow you out in the long run. It’s the ability to sit with yourself without needing to anesthetize your own existence. It’s the ability to see through the glittering distractions and ask: What actually matters?

But here’s the catch: that kind of clarity doesn’t feel exciting. It feels quiet. It feels still. It feels like the opposite of the frantic, buzzing energy that passes for excitement in our culture. And because we’ve been conditioned to equate stimulation with meaning, the quiet feels like boredom.

This is where the philosophical tension lies.

On one hand, wisdom asks us to slow down, to simplify, to pay attention, to cultivate inner stability. On the other hand, our culture screams at us to speed up, to consume, to chase, to never be satisfied. Wisdom is a whisper; the world is a megaphone.

No wonder wisdom feels boring. It’s not designed to compete with the circus.

But here’s the thing I keep coming back to: the circus is exhausting. It’s exhilarating for a moment, but it leaves you depleted. It’s like eating sugar for every meal. Eventually your body revolts. Eventually your mind revolts. Eventually your soul revolts.

And so I find myself returning to the so-called “boring” things — the quiet room, the old books, the ancient texts, the contemplative practices. I find myself drawn to the Upanishads, the Tao, the teachings of people who lived thousands of years ago and somehow understood the human condition better than most modern psychologists. I find myself wanting to sit with their words, not because they thrill me, but because they steady me.

Does that make me boring? Probably. But I’m increasingly convinced that “boring” is not the insult I once thought it was. In a world addicted to stimulation, boredom might actually be a sign of sanity.

Let me put it this way: if the opposite of wisdom is madness, and the opposite of boredom is overstimulation, then maybe boredom is the price of not losing your mind.

And maybe that’s a price worth paying.

But I don’t want to romanticize wisdom either. It’s not glamorous. It doesn’t make you the life of the party. It doesn’t give you the kind of stories that get you invited onto talk shows. It doesn’t make you interesting in the way people usually mean when they say “interesting.” It makes you steady. It makes you grounded. It makes you capable of seeing through your own nonsense.

And that, frankly, is not very exciting.

But it is liberating.

Because once you stop chasing excitement, you start noticing things you never saw before. The texture of ordinary moments. The subtlety of your own thoughts. The quiet beauty of being alive without needing to be entertained every second. You start to realize that the world is not boring — your overstimulated brain is. And wisdom, in its slow, patient way, begins to re-sensitize you to reality.

So is wisdom boring? Yes. Absolutely. Unquestionably. It is boring in the same way that a stable foundation is boring, or a well-functioning immune system is boring, or a calm sea is boring. It’s boring because it’s not chaotic. It’s boring because it’s not constantly demanding your attention. It’s boring because it doesn’t need to be exciting to be valuable.

And maybe that’s the point.

Maybe wisdom is the kind of boring that keeps you alive. The kind of boring that keeps you sane. The kind of boring that allows you to see the world clearly rather than through the fog of your own cravings.

So yes, I will conclude — reluctantly, ironically, and with a touch of self-mockery — that wisdom is boring. And by extension, I am boring. I read old books. I sit in quiet rooms. I think about things most people would rather avoid. I tether myself to ideas that have survived centuries rather than to the latest trend or impulse.

Why? Because the alternative is madness. Because the carnival of modern life, for all its glitter, leads nowhere. Because the thrill fades, the novelty wears off, the stimulation becomes noise. Because the only thing that seems to endure — the only thing that seems to offer any real stability — is the quiet, steady, unpretentious pursuit of wisdom.

So if I must choose between boring wisdom and exciting chaos, I choose boredom. Not because I’m noble, not because I’m enlightened, not because I’m better than anyone else, but because I’ve looked at the alternatives and found them wanting.

Why wisdom? Why boredom? Why simplicity? My answer is embarrassingly small, embarrassingly human, embarrassingly honest:

Why not?

There is nothing else. Really — there is nothing else.

Kenneth Myers