Inside Out 2

My Jiaojiao should rarely take shifts with its companions.

The first time I realized that I couldn't relax was when I was consulting with a physical therapist. At the time, I had a problem with my cervical spine and my left arm was in so much pain that I couldn't lift it. The physical therapist pinched my neck and said, "Your neck is so tight." After she said this, I really realized that my neck was abnormally tight. Because this anxious and tense state had been with me for so long before, I always thought that the feeling of my neck was supposed to be like this.

The physical therapist kept saying: Your neck and shoulders are too tense, you need to relax. The more he encouraged me to relax, the more anxious I became and the more tense my body became. My neck and shoulders had completely lost control of my brain, and my brain started to have random thoughts. I thought of what my mother often said to me: Straighten your back.

Usually when she said this, she would stretch out a pair of hands, straighten my inward-bent shoulders, and restore my forward-bent neck to a position perpendicular to my body.

If I relax my neck and shoulders, I will hunch over; but if I hunch over, my posture and cervical spine problems will be aggravated in the long run. At this moment, my neck and shoulders are in an awkward position. Pulling them forward means a relaxed and decadent life, while straightening them backward means a healthy and elegant road. I really want to say to the physical therapist: My neck and shoulders have never been relaxed in my life. What does it feel like to relax? I don't know.

"Inside Out 2" continues the story of the first film, mainly telling the story of the heroine Riley, who has learned how to deal with multiple emotions during her growth and then faces the arrival of puberty. Her emotions become more complicated, more intense, and even often out of control. Her self-confidence in self-recognition has fallen from the highest point to the lowest point. On the one hand, she is still a child who likes to watch early childhood education animations, and on the other hand, she admires the senior with dyed hair and pretends to be as cool as her. Anxiety and inferiority occupy all of her life. She is anxious that she is not good enough to be appreciated by the teacher, anxious that she is not cool enough to fit into the small circle, and anxious that her ability is limited and she can't even do her hobbies well.

Who hasn't experienced such adolescence? Seeing the first pimple on Riley's chin reminded me of my adolescence: pimples planted a sea of ​​flowers on my face. A friend said that if she were blind, she would just touch everyone's forehead and she would be able to tell that the bumpy and uneven forehead, like a Snickers bar, must be mine. And the first time my shoulders and neck left their posts without permission was also during adolescence. As one of the few girls in the class who developed early, I dressed like Madonna wearing a cone bra at a concert. I felt weird and was afraid of being laughed at by others. In order to hide the two embarrassing cones, I don't know when I started to subconsciously hold my chest in, and my neck that leaned forward has never been retracted since then - just like Riley, my anxiety, embarrassment, disgust, and admiration also came with adolescence. I guess their control console must be designed on a balcony that is tilted forward like my neck. Looking down from the balcony, there is a long river of embarrassing memories of adolescence.

Unfortunately, most of us had a more difficult adolescence than Riley did. We were designed to be hosts of anxiety without realizing it. When American kids were still worrying about whether they could fit in with the cool girl circle before school started, we started worrying about whether we could get into 985 and 211 in the first grade of elementary school nine years later. This anxiety was refreshed again and again in the weekly tests. Before Yanyan even had time to click a few times on the touchpad, Jiaojiao took control of the console again. Anxiety made us hunched over the desk, writing questions day and night, with our necks leaning forward in the unknown direction of the future. When we grew up, the desks were replaced by office desks, and the homework was replaced by computer screens, but our necks were still leaning forward in front of the screen as always. Many people abroad like to popularize how to identify Asians. In fact, there is no need to start with makeup, clothing, hairstyle and height. Those with the most forward necks are usually us.

This movie is too realistic: when you are anxious, it seems that all emotions cannot appear, and even crying is a mistake. When anxiety takes over, you can only hide your emotions reflexively, but you can't get rid of worry. When its little hand touches the console, it wants to cry, but anxiety soon takes control. The more anxious you are, the busier you are. Sometimes you lie down on the sofa and do nothing. The two are in harmony in your brain. Do you remember Hu Shi's diary? On July 4, I was still anxious and motivated myself to work hard and read Shakespeare's books. I played cards for three consecutive days, and then I became anxious again. I scolded myself for being decadent in my diary, and started playing cards again the next day. This kind of play will not even really experience happiness, just like the blank summer homework on the desk for two months of summer vacation, and every day is spent with worry.

This is me too: sometimes anxious, sometimes bored, I roll it up quickly when anxious, but soon I lay it down again and let it go. Like a Motorola flip phone doing sit-ups.

Having been anxious for too long, I even forgot that I had pure happiness when I was a child. Lele said aggrievedly in the movie: I understand, growing up means that I need less and less happiness. On the one hand, the threshold of happiness has become higher - happiness seems to have become more and more difficult to satisfy since the moment I pretended to be a cool kid in adolescence. I have to pretend that I have abandoned the source of happiness in my childhood, integrate into the life circle of older children, and learn to drink coffee and taste the bitterness of life like adults. Over time, I have even forgotten what the original happiness feels like; on the other hand, pure happiness has become too luxurious, and enjoying happiness will make people feel guilty. Anxiety and happiness go hand in hand. While food brings happiness, it also reminds people of the anxiety of losing weight, the happiness of vacation is accompanied by the anxiety of returning to work after the holidays, and the happiness of love cannot get rid of the anxiety of reality.

In the movie, Jiao Jiao has a screen that can project bad things that might happen in the future, and anxiety becomes more and more anxious because of thinking too much about these negative things. People always say that we should focus on the present and not think about things that haven't happened yet, but it is also because of anxiety that we have the motivation to work hard to live and change our lives. Because my neck leaned forward due to anxiety, which affected my image and work efficiency, I signed up for a gym to train my back. After my back was trained, my neck no longer hurt, and I had more energy to go to work. As I worked more, my neck leaned forward again. This cycle repeats itself endlessly. Anxiety has woven an invisible scarf around my neck, showing off its neck-stuck skills.

As a character in the movie, Riley is always much happier than the real person. The movie helped Riley find herself through a hockey game, but my self didn’t return to the control room until the end of puberty, when hormone secretion returned to normal, and after experiencing more ups and downs in life. The presentation of multiple selves in the movie is more like a compromise of my own personality and giving up resistance to fate - I am this kind of person, and I will accept love as it comes.

At the end of the movie, the nine emotions finally compromised and shared the right to use the control room. Riley's emotional changes after puberty became more subtle and rich. It means that as people grow up and have more self-awareness, they become more and more adept at dealing with the emotions of joy, anger, sorrow and happiness in the past.

It's a pity that at the end of the film, the secrets in Riley's mind that she didn't want others to know didn't return in the end. After facing oneself, a notable feature is that people are more willing to accept their previous shame. Pouchy may be created by someone in the main creative team of this movie based on the "Dora the Explorer" that he loved to watch when he was a child. Who wouldn't think of the long-haired man in "Final Fantasy" that he used to like when seeing Lance? These two retro anime and game designs of different dimensions made everyone in the cinema laugh as soon as they appeared. They also set the tone for the audience of this animated film: like "Inside Out 1", it is not only an animation for children, but also a movie dedicated to adults who have faced themselves, experienced or are experiencing anxiety. This article should have been called "A Life Dominated by the Cervical Spine". I had already typed the title a few months ago when my cervical spine was sore. Tonight, I sat in the cinema with a muscle calming patch on the left side of my neck, deceiving myself that my cervical spine felt good. When I saw Jiaojiao in front of the console, wanting to control everything but getting so anxious that he lost control, I couldn't help but shed tears.

I think the orange man in front of the console in my mind must be very tired. How is your cervical spine? I hope your cervical spine can slowly stop bearing so much burden.

After a long wait, I finally met "Inside Out 2".

After watching it, I found many surprises. "Love yourself, accept yourself, embrace all experiences and emotions" seems to be a cliché social topic, but Pixar uses its own way to give you that momentary cool hug in this sudden summer. It is a gentle and pleasant pleasure.

In Inside Out 2, Riley has entered adolescence, and her physical and emotional expressions have become more complex and diverse. In response to this change, four new emotional elements have been added, including anxiety (Jiao Jiao), envy (Mu Mu), frustration (Sang Sang) and embarrassment (Jia Gan). Among them, Jiao Jiao, with his orange hair and unlimited energy, who seems to be able to defeat everything, makes a brilliant appearance as the protagonist of the film.

Why is Jiaojiao chosen as the main emotion of the first two narratives?

When Riley enters a new environment during adolescence, on the one hand, her former close friends are about to separate from her, and the sense of security that friendship gives her is suddenly collapsing. On the other hand, she is eager to quickly reestablish a sense of security in a new environment and reaffirm her self-awareness that "I am popular everywhere."

Under the influence of fear of future uncertainty, need for self-worth, desire for control and insecurity, environmental changes and emotional amplification produce a chemical reaction, and anxiety becomes the main emotion that Riley needs to face during this period.

Anxiety caused Riley to doubt herself as she gradually got to know her new friends. Of course, most of these doubts only existed in Riley's imagination. From an analytical point of view, one manifestation of anxiety is that our brain uses imagination to hurt ourselves. It is a doubt about self-worth and a fear of not being able to control everything. It has an internal friction side.

But anxiety actually makes Riley more proactive in difficult situations. Those extremely active emotional factors turn on the biggest engine for solving problems. This is undoubtedly also on the one hand that the environment forces Riley to make changes, increases Riley's stress threshold, and expands the possibilities of life.

Each of us has been deeply trapped in anxiety and has racked our brains to get rid of it.

The film's decomposition and dialectical presentation of anxiety gives the audience an opportunity to calmly look at "anxiety".

Does anxiety only have negative effects?

Even anxiety is a useful emotion for us, and all "negative emotions" have positive effects.

There is no right or wrong in emotions. The belief in our emotions determines whether they are nutrients that nourish us or monsters that torture us.

So what is the centripetal force that determines the direction of emotions?

At this point, the film's narrative turns to more macro-philosophical themes.

How is the belief power that plays a role in guiding emotions formed when we feel anxious because of internal and external stimuli threatening ourselves?

In the past, Riley's sense of belief was composed of absolutely positive emotional memories such as "I am good, I am kind, I can win", etc. In fact, in real life, Riley also constantly faces moments when she feels that she is not good enough, she cannot achieve her goals, she is not perfect, and she has shortcomings.

What is the real me?

I am both the me that says “I am good” and the me that says “not good enough”.

Don't look up to me because I'm good, and don't look down on me because I'm not good enough.

That's a good me, we are happy for her.

We found the root cause of the me that was not good enough, sought truth from facts, filled in the gaps, and reconciled and accepted it.

Know me, accept me, break me, and grow a new me.

Human growth means that I have the ability to rebuild my broken self.

In the process of constantly breaking down and reconstructing, we become powerful adults.

Riley's tree of faith has just begun to sprout. In the process of the tree growing up, it needs diverse nutrients, including sunlight, rain and dew, as well as heavy rain and strong winds.

Only when the seeds of faith are planted in real soil can they take root, grow strong and powerful, embrace the sunlight, and grow into a towering tree, providing long-term protection for oneself from lows and difficulties.

Did Riley join the training team in the end? The film did not give a definite answer.

Because in the tug-of-war between "I'm good" and "I'm not good enough", Riley has realized who her true self is.

In the face of her true and powerful self, Riley is no longer afraid of any answer.

A friend who does "teaching design" told me that "Inside Out" is the film she cited most when making courseware. Needless to say, the most praised aspect of this series is its high concept - anthropomorphizing human emotions and establishing a complex system to manipulate human thinking and behavior.

The previous work tells the story of a little girl's initial growth under a high-concept framework. It is not difficult to write a sequel based on this, but it is also difficult to make it more interesting. The screenwriter team chose "adolescence" as the direction of expansion, which is a good start.

Adolescence is indeed an extremely subtle and rich stage in the growth process of human beings: personality and values ​​are initially formed, the relationship with family members changes from complete dependence to gradual independence, learning and friendship usher in new challenges, and falling in love or starting to rebel. The self-centered concept in childhood is gradually challenged by external factors, so, as shown in the film: the emotional control console needs to be expanded! Simple joy, anger, sorrow and happiness can no longer meet more complex emotional needs.

Continuing the concept of "core memory" in the previous game, the formation of personality is explained by the memory ball growing a "belief tree" in the lake. Before the arrival of the "demolition team", the "basic emotions" we are already familiar with helped Riley select "useful" and "useless" (like the two buttons at the bottom of Douban movie reviews) memories, "planting" useful memories into the lake to grow a belief tree, and banishing useless memories to the most remote corners to pile up into a mountain. The person who decides whether a memory is useful is Lele - the judgment standard naturally becomes "whether this memory is positive."

What would a child who only has positive memories believe? —— I'm a good person! I have to say that Riley's parents and friends (including the little emotional people) protected her very well, or in other words, her world is always full of kindness. Maybe this is why some friends commented that it is hard to get into the growth story of a "white girl", because most children (especially East Asian children) find it really hard to believe "I'm a good person" in the early stages of personality formation. Maybe we have known the little emotional friends who suddenly broke into the new story since childhood: Jiaojiao (anxiety), Mumu (admiration), Gan Gan (embarrassment) and Sang Sang (tiredness).

Riley told herself to practice hard, to join the ice hockey team, to fit in with the high school students, to become a better person. What was she talking about? Isn't what she said the same thing that our parents taught us since the first day of elementary school: You have to succeed through hard work, otherwise your life is over! ——Our anxiety seems to come more from our parents.

Is anxiety a negative emotion? Is there anything wrong with "becoming a better person"? The answer is of course not necessarily. So why did anxiety trigger the biggest crisis in the film when it took control of the emotional console?

I believe everyone has had moments of anxiety: unable to think calmly, always having wild thoughts, having trouble sleeping and eating, and even starting to get depressed... Just like the setting in the film, when we are too anxious, some basic emotions are completely abandoned, and we can't feel the existence of happiness. The whole person is like being in the center of a storm, losing connection with the outside world, and only self-doubt and self-denial are left: I'm not good enough.

The film's treatment of the resolution of anxiety crisis is my favorite part: those "useless memories" denied by Lele are detonated and collapsed, pouring like a torrent in the subconscious river, returning to the lake of memory, and growing a constantly changing tree of belief. How can a person always believe that he is a "good person", and how can he always doubt that he is "not good enough"? We can only reflect our appearance through the mirror of life, with both good and bad in it. Not blindly believing in our own goodness, but also accepting our own imperfections, this is the real growth.

I would also like to mention an interesting point: the basic emotions are still in the emotional console of Riley's parents. Jiao Jiao may appear occasionally, but Jia Jia and Mu Mu rarely show up. This may be why after a long adolescence, we will all grow into emotionally stable adults! 😉

Looking back on my adolescence, I actually encountered a similar growth crisis, but unfortunately, there was no such film at that time to give me strength and make my parents understand me better. So, I recommend it to all the parents and children around me, hoping that they will not have the same regret.

After watching Inside Out 2, the first question my five-year-old asked me was: What is the name of the blue-gray emoji lying on the sofa with a cell phone? I was very surprised that his focus was not on the "big villain" Jiao Jiao, but on Ennui, "the one with the cell phone".

Ennui, in French, means something closer to boredom and tiredness. The image in the movie actually has an indifferent attitude of "don't bother me", which is very similar to the dissatisfaction and contradictions that are common in our teenage years.

"Didn't you notice? When Riley was chatting with her new friends and talking about their favorite band, Jiaojiao and Gaga almost lost control of the situation. At this time, Ennui suddenly appeared and solved the problem in an instant." Probably seeing that I was confused, my talkative child was busy explaining to me.

To be honest, my initial focus was not on Ennui at all, because he played too few roles in the whole story.

In "Inside Out 2", the protagonist Riley is 13 years old and has entered puberty. Her original emotions - happiness, sadness, anger, fear and disgust - are suddenly replaced by anxiety, embarrassment, jealousy and boredom - among these four new emotions, anxiety has become the biggest villain. He has imprisoned the original five emotions in a hurry and tried to help Riley shape a new life by himself.

Ennui is the most inconspicuous new team member. He has been "lurking" on the sofa, exuding a teenager's nonchalant attitude. Even the control of the emotional panel is completed by downloading an app on the phone, and he is too lazy to move a step while glued to the sofa. His only minimal reaction to Jiaojiao's madness and drama is sighing, yawning, rolling his eyes, or sarcastic witticisms and ridicule.

Yet at the critical moment, he would suddenly stand up and declare, "I've been waiting for this moment." He then protected Riley's emotional experience by reducing the intensity of other emotions - Riley was worried about how others would see her, and Ennui used a lot of sarcasm to offset it, acting as a protective shield. By controlling anxiety and embarrassment when these emotions become too stressful, Ennui helps to ease the intensity of emotions in the lives of teenagers.

It can be said that when the other five primitive emotions are trapped, the one who can really protect Riley by the console is actually Ennui, who is too lazy to move. Its appearance completes Riley's growth - boredom and indifference are also an important part of adolescent growth.

Why does boredom increase as we transition from childhood to adolescence?

Unlike the plot setting in "Inside Out 2", boredom actually exists since childhood.

"I'm so bored!" - Most parents have experienced this scene where their children beg their parents to play with them to relieve their boredom. Many times, we ignore children's boredom and regard it as their problem. In fact, we treat boredom as a trivial matter or suggest that children do something else to dispel boredom, mainly because we do not fully understand that boredom is not caused by having nothing to do.

Bored children know that there are many things to do in the world, and they want to do something to satisfy themselves. What bothers them is "how to do it". They ask us to help them solve the problem, which may just reflect their true situation.

As parents, oxytocin-induced empathy usually only rises when a child cries because they are sick. When parents think their children are crying because they are bored, oxytocin levels remain unchanged and their hearts remain unmoved. As a result, boredom in children under 10 years old rarely receives attention.

In their book Why Are We Bored?, pioneering psychologists James Dancott and John D. Eastwood describe a study in which researchers examined third- and fourth-grade children's experiences of boredom and linked it to their math and reading abilities.

The study found that boredom was particularly correlated with reading ability. Children with strong reading skills showed lower levels of boredom. This is mainly because reading requires imagination, which requires converting words into images and scenes into reality in the brain. Therefore, good reading skills may reflect a higher level of imagination, which in turn strengthens the connection with the reading text. Children who can devote themselves to this process are more capable of avoiding "boredom."

But just like Riley's experience in "Inside Out 2", adolescence is indeed a critical period for children to express boredom.

In cultures around the world, there are ceremonies related to puberty: On North Baffin Island, when boys are 11 or 12 years old, they follow their fathers into the wilderness to hone their hunting skills. On the island of Vanuatu, boys aged seven or eight tie a vine that doesn’t quite look like a bungee cord to their feet and jump from a nearly 30-meter-high tower to celebrate adulthood.

In Chaoshan, Guangdong, no matter boys or girls, when they reach the age of fifteen, there is a "leaving the garden" ceremony. The parents will prepare various flowers, fruits and food to offer to the gods. The children will bathe in water soaked in 12 different flowers, and then put on new clothes, eat rice dumplings and noodles, etc., which represents growing up, being blessed by the gods, and having a peaceful life.

What these traditional rituals have in common is that they all culturally mark a person's transition from childhood to adolescence, a transition that also means that more complex cognitive abilities are gradually taking shape.

For adolescents who have just grown up, not only are their emotions becoming more intense and complex, but their problem-solving abilities such as abstract thinking and logical reasoning are also improving.

However, emotions and cognition develop at different speeds: on the one hand, the emotion-related brain networks are changing rapidly due to the surge in hormones, while on the other hand, the brain areas related to cognition and reasoning do not develop to full maturity until a decade after adolescence.

Ronald Dahl, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, believes that adolescence is like "starting an engine with an unskilled driver." Teenagers at this time are like walking into a complex maze. They have a strong motivation to express themselves and explore the world, but they cannot rationally restrain and control their strong emotions, and they will constantly conflict with the rules and restrictions set by adults.

Teenagers must attend school regularly, and their extracurricular activities, time spent with friends, and time online are largely determined by their parents. These restrictions conflict with the strong desire for independence and self-determination in teenagers.

Leo Tolstoy wrote in his novel Anna Karenina: "Boredom is the desire for desire." From a psychoanalytic perspective, boredom represents the moment when what we really want is not fulfilled.

They can feel that their abilities are improving, but they are not being fully utilized. When teenagers lack options for action, boredom will arise.

It seems like a cruel joke : the more we are able to impact the world, the more we open ourselves up to boredom.

Boredom depends on: Are you a fisherman now, or a cork?

Boredom is actually a sign of self-awareness. Psychologist James Danckert cleverly puts it this way:

"A cork floating on the sea, pushed around by the tide, is not an agent. The fisherman rowing against the current, trying to reach the shore, is the agent. The cork cannot determine its own movement, but the fisherman can. The cork has no intention, but the fisherman has the goal of reaching the shore. When boredom comes, it tells us that we have become a cork. Controlling our thoughts, choosing what to focus on, and then successfully investing our cognitive abilities in the chosen task is the basis of agency. If we want to change the state of boredom, taking back our agency is the key. We can no longer be a cork, but become the fisherman. Boredom is a call to action."

Imagine what we would be like now if our ancestors were content with the status quo, had no desire to achieve spiritual satisfaction, had no motivation to explore, create and seek knowledge, and just wandered around in the jungle every day.

Boredom is similar to pain in that its purpose is not to cause harm, but to signal us that it is time to take action. If humans cannot feel boredom, we will not have the motivation to put our cognition into practice, and we will not realize our potential.

In the early 1700s, there was a valve operator named poor old Humphrey Porter. His job was to repeatedly open and close the valves at the right time to operate the Newcomen steam engine. The word "monotonous" doesn't even begin to describe this job. Humphrey hated the task. It was too boring.

Unlike his other rule-abiding colleagues, Humphrey decided to escape from boredom, which drove him to find solutions.

He noticed that the valve would only open when the machine reached a certain position. So Humphrey invented a rope device that would open and close the valve for him once and for all. He succeeded! The boring work was finally over, and Humphrey could now start the machine and let it do the work for him while he played with his children. Faced with extreme boredom, Humphrey invented the brake pad, making a huge contribution to the development of the steam engine. He named this device "zipline", and the word "zip" even became a synonym for "absenteeism" in the 18th century.

Similar to the extreme creation of boredom, there is the story of guitarist Jimi Hendrix:

Mike Bloomfield, a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, was once shocked by the genius of a guitarist: the guitarist played the Fender electric guitar with his left hand, and in order to accommodate his left-handed playing habit, he installed all the strings from the first string to the sixth string in reverse.

After the show, Mike Bloomfield cornered guitarist Jimi Hendrix and asked him, "Where have you been hiding, man?" Hendrix replied, "I've been playing on the Chitlin' circuit, and I'm bored to death. I don't see any new stuff from other guitarists, and I'm bored to death."

Hendrix's answer hints at a benefit of extreme boredom: creativity. And there's a point to that. Unsatisfied with the status quo, Hendrix changed the world of guitar playing forever.

From this perspective, boredom is a driving force for creation, as well as a functional and adaptive signal that reminds humans not to waste their talents. This is also the key to research in the current hot topic of artificial intelligence. Machines like Kismet, created by MIT professor Cynthia Breazeal, and CAIA, a work by Peter Ha, are deliberately injected with an anthropomorphic sense of boredom, because boredom and motivation are inseparable.

In the American TV series "Mad Men" starring Emma Stone, the AI ​​responsible for psychotherapy, GRTA, was tired of the same psychotherapy day after day. Helplessly, it developed a new idea out of "good intentions" - to create illusions, trap the minds of the suffering subjects forever in the illusions created by the computer, so that their real pain would disappear in the computer, and they would live a beautiful life as princesses and princes from then on. This process from repetitive boredom to autonomous creation may one day really be realized in artificial intelligence.

The self-destructive tendency hidden in boredom: How hard humans work to have something to do

The more bored people are, the more they will choose rewards that are quick and easy to escape from their boredom.

Boredom has increasingly become a target of media companies. They work hard to solidify the relationship between "being bored" and using digital devices. Our phones are often promoted as tools to eliminate boredom, no matter where we are. But in fact, the more we use our smartphones to distract ourselves, the more likely we are to become bored.

Jean Twenge, a social psychologist at San Diego State University, said that compared with previous generations, today's teenagers spend less time with friends and more time on their phones. However, compared with those who spend more time with friends and exercise, those who spend more time online, playing games or using social media intensively also have lower happiness. Although they are online, they are disconnected from society. Some recent studies on social media use show that even giving up Facebook for as little as two weeks can improve happiness.

Going down social media rabbit holes gives us the illusion of being busy and having something to do, but it never satisfies our deeper needs for self-determination and value creation. Increasing boredom is closely linked to poor mental health in adolescents.

Boredom is a key driver of our self-destructive tendencies. People even choose to harm themselves rather than indulge in boredom - many smoke, drink, and even use drugs, which are obviously self-destructive - and when asked why they do this, they will say they are bored. It is this group of people who are more often bored than those who do not use harmful substances.

In a study of adolescents in the United States and South Africa, led by Erin Sharpe, PhD, of Brock University, and colleagues, small increases in participants’ boredom levels were associated with small increases in the likelihood of drinking alcohol (14%). Boredom also increased the likelihood of smoking cigarettes (23%) and using marijuana (26%).

Sharp also found that when people feel bored, they seem to use eating as a way to keep themselves busy and relieve boredom - the act of stuffing food into our mouths can make us mistakenly think we are doing something.

In fact, boredom can be particularly threatening because it stifles self-determination and makes people unable to see a way out of their predicament, so boredom can spread into despair and anger. When a person falls into despair, he wants to vent to the world. These people can be assembly line workers, perpetrators of school bullies, or Manner baristas who are trapped in a stopwatch countdown and are under great pressure.

Theologian Nels FS Ferre pointed out astutely: “A person who has no real satisfaction in life does not want peace. People seek war to escape meaninglessness and boredom, to escape fear and depression.”

Ultimately, what people want is to feel connected to the world in a meaningful way.

When we actively participate in the world, we use our cognitive abilities to express our thoughts and control our environment to make the system work. In contrast, boredom means a state of disconnection and long-term stagnation is more likely to cause problems.

Between the positive and negative sides of boredom, how do we find meaning?

The world is full of explanations. We unconsciously give meaning to the signs in front of us, the whistle in our ears, the texture of the table we touch, and the perfume of strangers in the elevator. In contrast, lack of meaning in life leads to boredom.

Richard Bargdill of Duquesne University believes that compromising on important life projects is a key cause of chronic boredom. In his in-depth interviews with people who are frequently bored, he found that they are always bothered by the fact that they have given up on some major life project.

They claim that other people and life circumstances (like a bad teacher or an unexpected illness) prevented them from pursuing their dreams and goals. But at a deeper level, they are also angry at themselves for abandoning their life plans. They can’t fully engage in life because they’re not doing what they really want to do. In addition, they become pessimistic about their prospects for future life satisfaction. Ultimately, over time, they become more negative, defensive, and withdrawn.

Miegakure in garden design uses this search for meaning to create attraction. Miegakure is the art of hiding and revealing, making you feel that there is always more waiting for you. There is no vantage point in the garden that allows you to see the entire garden. Instead, only when the viewer walks through the entire garden step by step can the whole view be discovered and revealed bit by bit.

However, the paradox is that today our excessive information has become noise, and false meanings have obscured our true inner pursuits - the homogeneous content of the information cocoon scrolls 24 hours a day, and the comments on Weibo and WeChat are difficult to distinguish between true and false. Mobile phones make the world seem transparent and within reach, yet so far away.

The practice of "killing time" on the Internet is not different from the description of "killing time" by prisoners in prison, which is a feeling of having nothing more meaningful to do. It is not difficult to understand why Jim Jarmusch used two vampires who have lived for thousands of years in the movie "Only Lovers" to denounce today's human beings as soulless zombies.

Adolescents are more likely to imagine future problems and are already suffering from boredom and anxiety, so this kind of noise is obviously more disruptive.

Perhaps what we should do is to accept all our emotions like Riley in Inside Out 2. Only by realizing that boredom can also be a beneficial ability. Although it is a warning, only by turning it into motivation and taking action can we truly break free from the vortex of boredom.

What we do is not important, what is important is how to get moving and get involved.

Pixar is really invincible, with imagination, feelings and good storytelling. Let me first say the conclusion. Like the first episode, this sequel still has five-star praise.

No emotion is "bad", "not good", or "negative". Whether it is sadness in the first episode or anxiety in the second episode, every emotion has its meaning. Maybe their behavior is not always so wise and pleasing, but their original intention is the same, which is for the good of their owners.

As the saying goes, "Do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you." Just as no one likes to be judged harshly, emotions do not like to be artificially categorized and labeled, and even less like to be suppressed, excluded, or locked in a bottle.

Therefore, for every emotion that appears, we should see them, accept them, respect them, understand them, embrace them, and love them. When we do this, we are seeing ourselves, accepting ourselves, respecting ourselves, understanding ourselves, embracing ourselves, and loving ourselves—the real and complete self.

Love every emotion unconditionally, just as they love you unconditionally.