This is the sixteenth post in a twenty-one-day series, counting down the days to publication (October 21, 2025) with a brief passage from each of the twenty-one essays included in The Best American Essays 2025. This year, the essays were selected by critically acclaimed author and essayist Jia Tolentino and edited by Best American Essays Series Editor Kim Dana Kupperman. The excerpts were curated by Best American Essays Editorial Assistant Bayani Young and are presented in the order of the volume’s table of contents.
“Boredom itself isn’t dangerous, of course, but what lies beneath it may be. The bored have strong desires and impulses that need to be unpacked. You have to get at the root impulse or desire behind boredom—make the unconscious conscious—for genuine relief. Once what’s beneath boredom is examined, youcan then discover what’s beneath that, which is usually hope.”
—Nuar Alsadir, “On Boredom,” Granta, Spring 2024.
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