[ENTP] ENTP Ennui

[CJ99]

Wow! I really relate to all this and i'm not sure if thays a good or a bad thing!?!?

I have a sorta constant fear of boredom that lurks at the back of my mind and makes me want to do shit all the time. Shit that actually means something. Like today i spent most of the day sleeping or playing games while a little vioce screamed "WTF do you think your doing! This is just pointless shit your doing!"

^ Yeah jenocyde i think about survival stuff all the time. Like after discovering the fallout series i keep on thinking of ways to survive a nuclear wasteland!

 

[jenocyde]

Yea, I really enjoy stories like Robinson Crusoe or war stories things like that. Where the nitty gritty of life is laid bare.

Did you ever read The Life of Pi? You should, if you haven't. It's a different type of survival story...

 

[Fiver]

I was always completely cool with my own imminent death. But I am older now and it feels like a long cape around me. I'm used to the feel of it, but it covers things now whips around me and has this dramatic flair about it. I don't know what to say. I don't know if it makes anything more meanigful or more meaningless. I just feel it now and I never did before.

Holy shit, I feel that you guys are speaking from my soul.

I always feel that way from Sub and Syn

 

[Sentura]

i think of it more as juggling impact grenades...

also i agree synarch. if i died tomorrow, it'd be a good day.

 

[Fiver]

^Having kids changed that for me.

 

[Synarch]

i think of it more as juggling impact grenades...

also i agree synarch. if i died tomorrow, it'd be a good day.

I don't necessarily want to die I just feel like I need a reason to live and a lot of times I don't know what that reason is other than habit.

 

[Synarch]

Did you ever read The Life of Pi? You should, if you haven't. It's a different type of survival story...

No, explain please.

 

[jenocyde]

No, explain please.

I don't want to explain it and tell you the story. I just think you would enjoy it... It's an adventure story that's very cerebral.

 

[sunset5678]

ennui..japanese word for eternal. i learned it recently and never heard it
before, but now I've heard it on here and in a description from one chara-
cter of another in a book I just finished reading. I guess my ennui would
be anything challenging...I'm not afraid of failure because learning how to
do things that seem difficult or too much of a challenge to others so they
write them off as things they just don't see much use for and turn to mu-
ndane repetitiousness to make things easier...simplified...because I want
them to become possibilities and stop being fantasies...I guess day dream-
ing is my ennui...I've realized things catch our interests for a reason and
even though you can't rationally explain it, you can't pretend they don't
matter like other things you decided to give up doing...you just feel some-
thing different...and you don't know what it can turn into if you don't try.

 

[jenocyde]

Oh that's beautiful that it means eternal in japanese.

Ennui, in the latin based translation, is boredom. But a very severe and depressing boredom - an emptiness - and I think that's what this thread meant. But I like the japanese definition much better...

 

[Qre:us]

Sure, there are challenges in life, but they're either like crosswords - pointless, gain nothing by doing them, or exams - you know you could pass it if you really wanted to, but don't care enough to do the work, and it's not worth bothering with the work because pwning it won't give satisfaction when you never doubted you could anyway.

Sometimes, I think myself to the point of actually doing it [in my mind]...
that it might as well have been done in reality. Then, it's like, meh. No point actually trying. Challenge not quite worth it for the 'true' experience. Next time, next one. ...Um...maybe.

But, I do know a bit of (over)underhanded arrogance comes about. A sly coverup for the P-ness. Pour moi.

.....ever feel like ennui will utterly engulf you if you don't keep on "adding plates", to use Synarch's brilliant analogy? Do you yearn for something that will be able to force you out of autopilot? Stop this feeling of coasting through 'til you get to an important part that never comes?

Most important questions, imo, pertaining to ^ existential crisis, which becomes uniquely hard/interesting, when one's an inclined optimist:

- do I limit learning by always thinking that I can swing by on the fly? Do I miss out on learning another perspective?Trying it 'nother way?
E.g.,
For all things sane and holy...a plan?!!
(for all my change, some aspects of how I conduct/approach life, unfortunately (fortunately), I'm stubborn to change...plan anarchist here, self-confessed )

- as a harsh reality shake: do I have a right to complain, when I, in part, throw the potential away? Which then I inevitably feel a sense of melancoly that skews my perception of the world (even if for just a short while, it tends to be bone weary, heavy).

In essense, what right do I have though to ask the universe to 'challenge me more'? What hubris?
(why should I expect the world to challenge me? Why do I not go out to seek, harder? what right do I have to complain about the hamster wheel if, in part, I'm on it out of my own volition?**)

** measure of degree is important for consideration in the above condition

 

[Economica]

can't say as I relate to those lyrics at all Economica! It's like the total polar opposite of me!!! LOL your dude in the song feels overwhelmed by choices, thinks they're all bad, and so decides to do nothing and atrophy in a pit of self pity! OTOH, I feel like there's a lot out there that's good, i'm very optimistic and upbeat and my response to the frustration of not being able to REACH the worthwhile things is to go out and keep trying, keep looking. I resolutely REFUSE to feel sorry for myself.

Picking showcase lyrics is not my forte (I guess you need to hear the upbeat music and the detached, ironic delivery to catch the tone in that song (go to Gronlandic Edit); it's really more exasperated ennui than wallowing in self-pity, I swear!), but substitute, I'm 99% sure the guy is ENTP and knows all about the plates (and the 1% doubt is only because the ENTP who introduced me to the band and whose typing prowess I respect won't entirely rule out the possibility of INFJ ). He is the kind of ENTP who is prone to mood swings/depressive periods and he is also the more introverted kind (you really never spent a winter with your nose buried in a book while trying to restructure your character? ), but I know more ENTPs like that than I know temperate and strongly extroverted ENTPs, so I figure someone who gravitates to this thread will relate to the music. Anyone...?

 

[substitute]

^Having kids changed that for me.

That's what I thought at first, but now I know it just sorta keeps it at bay a bit. That's what I meant about "running out of obligations to the world". I imagine my kids being grown up and moved away and not needing me, and all the sorta community work I find satisfying becomes so wrapped up in red tape and made impossible cos of the way this fucking police state is going, so I end up with nothing left to do, I can't help thinking... "well, if you're alright to carry on without me, I'll just uh, I'll just go then" - and actually dreading that someone might call after me, "no wait, we're not finished with you yet, we still need you".

Re the survival thing - I once marooned myself in the centre of Prague with no money. On purpose. I survived a week and got myself home as well

I don't necessarily want to die I just feel like I need a reason to live and a lot of times I don't know what that reason is other than habit.

Bingo. Also, I don't necessarily want to die, but am not afraid to.

 

[Sentura]

I don't necessarily want to die I just feel like I need a reason to live and a lot of times I don't know what that reason is other than habit.

i was tired yesterday, so my point didn't come fully across. i was meant to say that i have seen enough in my life to die and still consider it a good thing. essentially, i have lived "carpe diem".

 

[MacGuffin]

ennui..japanese word for eternal. i learned it recently and never heard it
before, but now I've heard it on here and in a description from one chara-
cter of another in a book I just finished reading. I guess my ennui would
be anything challenging...I'm not afraid of failure because learning how to
do things that seem difficult or too much of a challenge to others so they
write them off as things they just don't see much use for and turn to mu-
ndane repetitiousness to make things easier...simplified...because I want
them to become possibilities and stop being fantasies...I guess day dream-
ing is my ennui...I've realized things catch our interests for a reason and
even though you can't rationally explain it, you can't pretend they don't
matter like other things you decided to give up doing...you just feel some-
thing different...and you don't know what it can turn into if you don't try.

Just curious - any reason why you are manually hitting enter at a certain point? You're putting breaks in lines and words where they don't need to be. Text automatically wraps.

 

[jenocyde]

Re the survival thing - I once marooned myself in the centre of Prague with no money. On purpose. I survived a week and got myself home as well

...and Prague is hella expensive these days, so that's no easy feat.

 

[substitute]

...and Prague is hella expensive these days, so that's no easy feat.

Ah, this was back in 1996, when I was 18

 

[Samvega]

I may go back and read this thread, didn't wanna forget what I was thinking. I googled "ENTP Ennui" and found this, how odd, I wanted to see how often they were used together. I'm seriously suffering from this right now and behaving oddly even for me. I'm worried it's going to freak people out and I don't want my actions taken wrong.

I have only two modes, 150 miles an hour and stopped. I can't control 150mph for long amounts of time and I worry about the toll it takes on me. I worry a lot about getting stuck there without knowing I've done it. I have done this in the past, I can't sleep, I cant sit through a movie, life in unbearable.

Stopped, well I can't take that either, I get caught in Ne/Ti loops for long amounts of time. I get bored, disappointed in myself for wasting my potential and it's not healthy for me but I have NEVER found any balance, nothing even close to it.

So now I sit, and this is going to sound odd, maybe like a cry for help though I assure you it is anything but. I sit loving life and wanting to suck every ounce of enjoyment I can out of it yet at the same time feeling profoundly tiered in a way sleep won't help, feeling totally worn out and exhausted, no longer wanting to do this, any of it. At least not like I have been.

I feel like I'm in a fighter doing mach 5 when an engine goes out. I know I don't have long to get it restarted and now, I feel like I have this one last big chance but if it doesn't happen there won't be time to eject. I feel like if I eject I know the force of doing so will rip my limbs from me. So, I'm going to give it this one last grand try and if it doesn't work I'm going to crash this bitch into the side of a mountain and have fun doing it.

I am planning to make some very drastic changes to my life in hopes I will find what I'm looking for. I don't know that's possible, the way I eat up information I feel like I'm running out of things to learn. I feel like they're band-aids, buying me 2-3 years at a time. I love life, a lot so I don't know what else to do but I can tell you this freaks me out and has been my biggest fear for a very, very long time.

 

[Qre:us]

I have only two modes, 150 miles an hour and stopped. I can't control 150mph for long amounts of time and I worry about the toll it takes on me. I worry a lot about getting stuck there without knowing I've done it. I have done this in the past, I can't sleep, I cant sit through a movie, life in unbearable.

Stopped, well I can't take that either, I get caught in Ne/Ti loops for long amounts of time. I get bored, disappointed in myself for wasting my potential and it's not healthy for me but I have NEVER found any balance, nothing even close to it.

So now I sit, and this is going to sound odd, maybe like a cry for help though I assure you it is anything but. I sit loving life and wanting to suck every ounce of enjoyment I can out of it yet at the same time feeling profoundly tiered in a way sleep won't help, feeling totally worn out and exhausted, no longer wanting to do this, any of it. At least not like I have been.

Interesting. I wonder if complete burnouts are part of the ENTPs' life-course M.O. ?? But, most don't show it to the outside world, cuz of our natural tendency to keep looking up (the optimism - this won't last forever, I have comfort in knowing that, type of thinking)

I think once in a while, there's a great need for silence from ALL life's possibilities for me (esp. as a lot of times, they come at me, all at once). To take in, and smell the 'roses', so to speak. But, because I don't (yet) have control of 'planning' for these downtimes, no forethought, that, when/if it does reach this stage, *boom*....it's a charcoaly, still sizzling, heap of burnt embers.

And...we rinse and repeat.

 

[yenom]

Death is a constant fear to those who fought wars and survivefd assassinations.
Death is an unconquerable enemy, an enemy that lurks within our deepest fears.
The only way to conquer death is to experience it everyday. How to do this?
take risks, believe that there is much more in life than what you think, and accept the outcome no matter what happens.

Fear is the greatest enemy to freedom. But alot of historical figures have developed courage in spite of fear: caesar, bonaparte, alexander, martin luther, joan of arc, jesus. One who ponders death every moment will never waste a moment in his life, because he knows time is short.