Why a 'Boring' Life Might Be the Happiest One
40 comments
·October 20, 2025darth_avocado
> Just watching the film made me feel so calm. Like the film itself gave me a warm hug and whispered: “It’s okay to live a slow boring life”.
Maybe it’s me but the only reason you can fall in love with the life of a Japanese toilet cleaner is because either the Japanese society allows someone in that profession to be at peace or the movie leaves out significant parts of life that impact your inner peace. Coming from a place where worrying about arranging even a small amount of money in a short amount of time for a medical emergency could ruin your peace for years, I think all of what’s mentioned in the article is possible only after your basic needs are taken care of.
qsort
This is it. Of course you love a boring life. Boring is great, in most people's lives variance is terrible news. But boring means being able to tank variance, which is an absurd luxury.
delbronski
Poor people can’t afford a slow, boring life in the United States.
That’s a luxury reserved for the rich.
coffeecoders
The idea of slowing down and finding joy in small routines assumes you've already escaped the constant anxiety of bills. It’s hard to be at peace when your baseline reality is a few paychecks away from chaos.
There’s a quiet cruelty in how modern economies make stability feel like a luxury. Owning a home, having savings, or even time to be bored used to be normal milestones, now they are privileges. Until the basics are within reach again, the “boring” life will remain a fantasy for many who’d give anything for that kind of peace.
Most of us here work in tech and make six figures, but not everyone has that luxury.
IAmBroom
Money doesn't create happiness, but the lack of money can create unhappiness.
coffeecoders
This line is often used to downplay how much economic stress shapes mental health.
rafabulsing
How does "lack of money can create unhappiness" downplay the effects of economic stress on mental health?
baal80spam
> There’s a quiet cruelty in how modern economies make stability feel like a luxury. Owning a home, having savings, or even time to be bored used to be normal milestones, now they are privileges.
Ehh, I don't know. Didn't people for vast majority of our history worry about what (if anything) they would eat not even next month, but next week?
coffeecoders
Sure, for most of human history, survival was a daily concern. It's just unnatural that in a time of record productivity and abundance, many still feel the same survival anxiety.
My point isn’t that we’re worse off than pre-industrial farmers. It is that progress was supposed to free us from that precarity, not repackage it with Wi-Fi and subscriptions.
marssaxman
This has to be personality-dependent, as with so many other aspects of human existence; a cozy quiet little life is not what I want at all.
I do like the author's point about "it's ok to miss out", though. You're going to miss most of life anyway, whatever you do, so as long as you found a path through life that felt full as you were walking it, what's the difference which one it was?
abhiyerra
"Plunge into the world, and then, after a time, when you have suffered and enjoyed all that is in it, will renunciation come; then will calmness come. So fulfil your desire for power and everything else, and after you have fulfilled the desire, will come the time when you will know that they are all very little things; but until you have fulfilled this desire, until you have passed through that activity, it is impossible for you to come to the state of calmness, serenity, and self-surrender." -Swami Vivekananda
When I was in my 20s and early 30s I read that and scoffed because I was hustling, building my career and company. But over the last few years, I realize all that hustling just leads to an empty shell of a life. I just want a simple life where I spend a lot of time with my wife, son and family.
Esophagus4
Sounds like that is the best of both worlds if you can now chase what is meaningful to you today if that is no longer the grind. And had you not “hustled,” you might’ve always wondered “what if?” (which is the true tragedy.)
> “let us take on the world while we’re young and able, and bring us back together when the day is done” - the highwomen
cindyllm
[dead]
clickety_clack
It’s a lot easier to be happy with a boring life if you’ve gone and lived an exciting one first.
supportengineer
Turned 50 recently and I have come to the same conclusion. I just want to live a simply life with simple joys.
However that would only be possible because I've been working and saving since I was 15 years old.
svachalek
I think in most developed, even developing countries, a simple life with simple joys does not require extraordinary effort and commitment to career. The issue is mostly the inflation of expectations for what is "required" in life, such that "simple joys" becomes a $10 coffee every morning.
p_ing
The author mistakes introversion to do-little/nothing. Many introverts love socializing and being around friends, it’s just energy-depleting and takes (more) time to recharge.
That said, doing little or nothing is quite relaxing, especially on rainy days.
JKCalhoun
> I feel the world has become too fast. Too restless. Too demanding. We don’t say it, but there’s always this quiet pressure we all feel. A pressure to know all the latest trends. The latest fashion. The latest tech. A pressure that creates a subtle fear inside our hearts.
I agree with the general premise, just not the details like the above.
Long before trends, fashions, tech entered my life, I became acutely aware of my brevity in this (likely one and only) life. That has been pressure enough, coming from within, to make the most of it.
I guess I have not yet been able to shake that. There are things, like fishing for example, that I suspect I might enjoy. But I see feel the time for fishing is when I am too old to do other things.
FWIW, I am retired now and spend my days working on one project or another (or several).
Perhaps I am not enjoying life as much as I could be … if I could just shake off the anxiety that the sand is running through the hourglass.
My cats sure seem to not care a wit.
dlivingston
I strongly recommend to you to read the book Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I think it will resonate with you.
AppleBananaPie
I really like the ideas presented. I hope more people can find happiness like this.
Aside - For some reason I can't stand the writing style but also strongly feel that this opinion is completely wrong and this intense dissonance is a very very bizarre feeling.
Thanks for sharing :)
sieep
There's a handful of strange grammatical errors & many short sentences, that gave it a weird vibe for me too. Worth reading, though.
aresant
"When I was a kid, science fiction was off in the future somewhere. . . now it’s kind of science fact. . . AI and social media and all these influences are driving progress so quickly, at a pace that I think many of us, as human beings, are having a hard time keeping up with."
This is a quote from Alex Proyas (director of Dark City, irobot, the crow etc), he has long observed that humans are biologically under-adapted for a modernity of silicon-fueld complexity
https://www.starburstmagazine.com/features/alex-proyas-dark-...
CaptainOfCoit
> Instead, do things that are sustainable in the long-term. Things that don’t make you feel like you’re betraying yourself. Things that don’t feel forced.
As a counter-perspective, not saying you have, but me forcing myself to do things that are essentially the opposite of that (move to the other side of the world without any plan) basically changed my life for the better. It felt forced, a bit like betraying myself, and as an introvert, completely outside my comfort zone. Yet it was probably the best decision I've made in my life so far.
But again, it's OK to wanting to focus on sustainable, non-forced things too.
I'm not sure if a 'Boring Life' is for me. But I am sure I need some seasons of my life to be boring.
Since I was 20 I've grinded away at my career, side hustles, etc... It made me happy. But at a certain point I got far enough ahead I felt complete. I needed a boring phase.
I now wake up, have breakfast with my family, go to work, come home, play with my kids, watch a show, and go to bed. This is a day I would have scoffed at 10 years ago. But it now makes me happy. I don't think it would make me happy if I hadn't went for something the last 15.
And it might not make me happy forever, but it's perfect for me right now.