ABSTRACT
The life full of commitments is associated with enthusiasm, activity and single-mindedness. Boredom involves mental discomfort, an unsatisfactory situation from which you desire release. The state of contentment, of not wanting what you haven’t got, can be enjoyed by anyone, regardless of their level of activity. Many slothful people are content with relative inactivity. This appears to capture, at least in part, the condition of acedia discussed by theologians of late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Mill had been an intellectually precocious boy, and his analytical abilities were cultivated to great extremes by those who taught him. Tolstoy’s crisis was different. So generalized acedia, boredom and despondency are the enemies of commitment. Local or specific instances of these things need not be, for what we need is a discriminating willingness to seize joy and take risks.
