An article in the NY Times last week titled We’ve All Hit A Wall got me thinking about the French word “ennui.” It’s used in English to describe a type of weary, restless boredom that many people seem to feel right now, including me.
I wanted to share the idea of “ennui” with you because naming an emotion helps us deal with it. Words enable us to understand, recognize, talk about, and process our own inner experience and the inner experience of others. If you use text or voice analytics to track sentiment you may have picked up on this growing sense of melancholy.
Ennui is more intense than feeling blah, blue, sluggish, lethargic, listless, restless, or apathetic. Think existential crisis, not “are we there yet?” If you’re a true word nerd, check out this article by linguist Arika Okrent. She tries to describe the difference between ennui, angst, and “Weltschmerz,” a German emotion word I’d never heard of until today. That’s the kind of subtlety words can’t always capture, but precision isn’t the point. What is?
Empathy. Validation. Support.
