Boredom!

Boredom! It is a common phrase that is to be heard everywhere! Friends, colleagues, neighbors... I wonder what it to be bored all the time is! looks like people these days have a lot of time... time enough to be bored... my friend does not know what to do on week ends! He is bored the two days he is off work!! And on Mondays it is the 'Monday blues'... it is so boring to go to work on Monday! Working is boring and days away from work too are boring! I wonder what else it is to be living life...
I have never seem my father say he is bored... and i have never seen my grandfather say he is bored... in fact my grandfather is a person who has lived long enough to see major changes in life right from electricity to the computers.. He and people of his generation lived in a different world... they had no television to watch, they had no Internet... chips for them meant some thing that they could eat...web was something the spider spun in the corners, site was a place where they intended to build houses!! Now meanings and definition have changed...lifestyles have changed. My grandfather and his friends spent time doing a lot of things... lot of activities... crosswords, puzzles, reading news papers and books...they also played a lot when they were young.. Football, cricket tennis and what not... chinni dandu etc in fact my grandfather who is retired from work for almost two decades is never bored... and of course now his new addiction is the TV soaps along with his puzzles, crosswords and news papers...
My father is from a far younger generation vis a vis my grandpa (which is obvious) he is still into his work... he works for one of these public sector banks and makes money enough to fend for his family.. He has not seen the big bucks software engineers and MBAs these days see... and he is so very contented with his work, with his earnings and his way of life. I have never seen him crib on Monday mornings. He has not even heard of the word Monday blues.
But now I see people of my generation suffering for assorted diseases... monday blues, perpetual boredom, burnout and what not.. These are syndromes people of older generation never knew of. I am just wondering if these are the creation of modern industry, way of work and marginalization of human effort the and marginalization of human role. Earlier people really worked .they used their brains and muscles... now most of the time we see the physical exercise part is almost nil...and computers do most of the work for us.. All that is to be done is follow a chat of programme... thats it... i wonder what is the factor that is leading to such a drastic change in the mind set of our workforce. no one appears to be contented with what they have. Frequent job changes mostly guided by pay packages, the herd mentality of choosing something that has been proved a safe choice by others. What are we doing? And where is it leading us to? What will be life and working is down the lane... say in the next 20 years!! It is very difficult to even guess