In his The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, German philosopher Martin Heidegger discusses the human predilection for boredom as perception of the passage of time and the lack of attunement with the world and human environment. He calls this process of awareness of being “individuation.” The subtitle of his work (originally a series of lectures) is “World, Finitude, Individuation.” But Heidegger considers individuation as the process of discovering one’s solitariness. Hence the original subtitle of the work, left by Heidegger in the published editions: “World, Finitude, Solitude.” Individuation is “that solitariness [emphasis in the original] in which each human being first of all enters into a nearness to what is essential in all things, a nearness to world.”
Most people think of this experience as negative: melancholy, alienation, isolation. That is because what is actually experienced is cultural and social. Heidegger intends solitude as a condition of being and consciousness, a neutral description. But this fundamental solitude can be described as positive when we begin to re-engage individuation with nature and a harmonious universe. Yet, as every tradition knows, human beings are forever restless, conscious of impermanence and of their own individual finitude.