Boredom is your window on the properties of time that one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one's mental equilibrium. It is your window on time's infinity. Once this window opens, don't try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open.
Interpretation
Boredom can help us understand the nature of time and our mental state, urging us to embrace it rather than avoid it.
In this quote, Joseph Brodsky suggests that experiencing boredom is a valuable opportunity to reflect on the nature of time and our mental balance. Rather than dismissing boredom as tedious, he encourages us to explore it fully, as it can reveal deeper truths about existence and our perception of time's endlessness.
In practice
During a speech about mental health awareness, you might use this quote to illustrate the importance of acknowledging periods of boredom.
Basically, it's hard for me to assess myself, a hardship not only prompted by the immodesty of the enterprise, but because one is not capable of assessing himself, let alone his work. However, if I were to summarize, my main interest is the nature of time. That's what interests me most of all. What time can do to a man.
One always pulls the trigger out of self-interest and quotes history to avoid responsibility or pangs of conscience.
On the whole, infinity is a fairly palpable aspect of this business of publishing, if only because it extends a dead author's existence beyond the limits he envisioned, or provides a living author with a future he cannot measure. In other words, this business deals with the future which we all prefer to regard as unending.
The invention of ethical and political doctrines, which blossomed into our own social sciences, is a product of times when things appeared manageable. The same goes for the criticism of those doctrines, though as a voice from the past, this criticism proved prophetic.
Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those - in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed.
To put it in plain language, Russia is that country where the name of a writer appears not on the cover of his book, but on the door of his prison cell.
When all actions are mathematically calculated, they also take on a stupid quality.
If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.
Work is the only thing that gives substance to life.
Western laziness consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues.
You can't have capitalism without racism.
We face a conflict between civilisation and culture, which used to be on the same side. Civilisation means rational reflection, material wellbeing, individual autonomy and ironic self-doubt; culture means a form of life that is customary, collective, passionate, spontaneous, unreflective and arational.
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