Existential ennui: to ignore or not ignore?

It’s a shame, but no one likes Existential Ennui.

No, I’m not talking about some new hipster band, or that French guy in the back of your philosophy class who always wears black and keeps talking about Søren Kierkegaard.

I mean the feeling of listlessness you get if you read too much Albert Camus, or fail Calculus II for the second time, or spend seven years trying to get out of Tech.

(No one knows what happens if you read a lot of Camus and fail Calculus II for the second time in seven years, but I suspect it would be less like ennui, and more like that Dali painting with the melting clock.)

Of course, you don’t actually have to do anything to get ennui. More often than not it happens when you’re doing nothing.

For instance: you’re just sitting back and relaxing when suddenly you realize that you haven’t checked your email for twenty minutes; you ask yourself whether you really check your mail that often; you realize you’re wasting valuable relaxation time thinking about whether you really check your mail every twenty minutes, then you realize you’re wasting valuable thinking time relaxing, which leads you to wonder what exactly you’re doing with your life.

Poof! You’ve Got Ennui.

At its most basic level, ennui isn’t so bad—only a wish to make one’s life more exciting and purposeful or, at the very least, boring in a different way.

But no one likes ennui because it’s annoying and petulant, and it can prompt you to make abrupt, seemingly-reckless life-changing decisions, such as moving to Cambodia in order to study the Order of Light under Guru Ashlith Sun-Speaker. Or taking off on a cross-country trip with nothing but your car, a change of clothes and the willingness to do menial labor for food. Or, my personal favorite, dropping your present degree path to take up something completely different, like junkyard sculpture or high school English instruction.

Despite its disadvantages, ennui can be a valuable signal that something in your life needs to change. But the instinctual response, especially here at Tech, seems to be to “stay the course.” Ignore it and keep on trucking.

Of course, ennui isn’t always a sign from your subconscious and putting it off can be quite fun. So I offer this short list of excitingly purposeful projects designed to dispatch existential nagging, if only for a time:

1. Form a band named “Existential Ennui.” Read portions of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness in a French-accented monotone with heavy bass accompaniment. Change the spelling of the band’s name before every performance (“existençal en-oui,” “X-is-tential &we,” etc.) to poke fun at your continuing journey through uncertainty.

2. Invent a new dance step called the “Existential Ennui.” Take your bad self out to a dance club and boogie-woogie the night away. (Funny word, that. No, not “away.” “Boogie-woogie.” Hmm...)

3. Investigate the etymology of the word “boogie-woogie.” Seriously, this has confounded the finest lexicographical minds of the past century...H.L. Mencken, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary. Even Al Gore. I mean, he invented the Internet but still couldn’t figure out where “boogie-woogie” came from. What could be more exciting and purposeful than that?

4. Shoot an action/adventure/mystery movie about investigating the etymological root of “boogie-woogie.”

Imagine it: Chuck Norris stars as Chuck Norris in “The Mystery of the Etymological Root of Boogie-Woogie.” Costarring G. Wayne Clough as Mr. Chips, The Oxford-educated Scholar Of Archane Literature.

Norris: “Now look here, Chips. We got to find that etymological root now. Or the world will explode.”

Mr. Chips: “But it has primitive forms everywhere. See, there’s even a form in early Low German! Mein Gott!”

Norris: “Then there’s only one thing to do, Chips. We’ll take those cognates down with our bare hands, one by one. Yaaaarrrgggghhhh!!!”

5. Contemplate the daunting hilariousness of the word “boogie-woogie.” If you’re like me, when those twelve letters and hyphen come together in that order, the resulting word has supernatural comic power.

Mostly because it makes me think of the Planeteers getting together to call out Captain Planet. (“With your powers combined, I am boogie-woogie!”) In my mind, the hyphen is the little boy who got shafted with Heart.

But remember to play safe, folks! Think before you reject your next pang of ennui: are you just bored or do you really want to drop everything and move out to Arizona to make and sell pewter ninja figurines at a wide spot in the road?