"Boredom: that state of diffuse restlessness which contains that most absurd and paradoxical wish, the wish for a desire."

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- Adam Phillips in his book On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life (1993)

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Boredom, that melancholy mood and that subject dear to the hearts and minds of philosophers and poets, is suddenly in the news because of Mark Parton's now famous and blush-making-for-him text.

During a recent budget estimates hearing the leader of the Liberal opposition in the ACT Assembly texted someone (perhaps a sex worker, but perhaps not) that "f--k my job is boring." (Here, for this family column, I will imitate the Canberra Times' responsible style for reporting Parton's f-word.)

There has been lots of unkind criticism of Parton, with the bristling fogeys of this newspaper's Letters page bristling that he has no right to be bored, even for a moment, when he is being paid $300,000 a year to be 24/7 thrilled to serve the people.

This is a bit much, coming from Canberra's most notorious bores, the same two dozen unrepresentative octogenarians who write 99.9 per cent of all the letters, making that page a bottomless quagmire of boredom.

But I digress, and want to say here that wise thinkers galore have written of the nuanced complexity of boredom and of its importance to a full and thoughtfully led life.

In one of my favourite blogs, the Marginalian, its blogtrix Maria Popova has a ripper recent post titled 200 Years of Great Minds on the Creative and Spiritual Value of Boredom.

Ms Popova's surveyed works include revered philosopher Bertrand Russell's Boredom and Excitement and psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips' bewitchingly-titled On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life.

One recurring theme Ms........

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