You're listening to life kit from NPR.
Hey, what's up, everyone?
Andrew Limbaugh here in for Marielle Seguera.
There's a certain type of character I love in any book or tv show or movie, and that is the person whose life looks pretty good on paper, and yet they're not happy.
There's a certain glum grayness, a blondness to their life.
I'm thinking about the couple in Richard Yeats revolutionary Road or the main character in Ottessa Moshfegh's my year of rest and relaxation.
I mean, this feeling is a staple of the great Gen X movies, you know, from reality bites to fight club to office space.
What's up, G?
Wanna go to Chachki's, get some coffee?
It's a little early.
I gotta get out of here.
I think I'm gonna lose it.
Uh oh.
Sounds like somebody's got a case of the Mundus.
Because we can all relate, right?
You get a new job, a new place, a new relationship, whatever, and everything is sparkly and new and exciting until it just isnt anymore.
We all get a case of the Mondays sometimes.
I talked to Tali Sherritt about this.
Shes a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London and MIT.
And she says this feeling when the shine of something wears off is something called habituation.