Madeleine Aggeler, writing in The Guardian, has an unsurprising story. No one can handle being bored anymore.

People hate feeling bored. We hate it so much that we spend hours mindlessly scrolling through our phones. Many of us would rather experience physical discomfort than sit quietly with our own thoughts, as a 2014 University of Virginia study found. Nearly half of participants sitting alone in a room for 15 minutes, with no stimulation other than a button that would administer a mild electric shock, pressed the button.

On the other hand, we also romanticize boredom. Philosopher Walter Benjamin once wrote in his book Illuminations: “Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience.” That is: boredom is a rich, loamy soil of creativity, and stepping back from the constant stimulus of everyday life allows the mind to expand.

So which is it: a fertile, imaginative state or mind-numbing agony?

The answer, according to experts, is both. Like life’s proverbial lemons, boredom is what you make of it.

“Boredom is what you make of it” sounds about right to my ear. I admit, it has been a long time since I’ve been bored. Having a Smart phone with access to the entire planet is a boredom killer. Boredom itself isn’t bad. How you handle it can be.