Only those fully absorbed in life are protected from being dismantled by the void within them:
At the origin of diversion, of the will to be diverted or amused at any price, there is an attempt to escape, but from what? It can only be from oneself. The ego is without any doubt faced with a dilemma: to fulfill itself or to escape. Where it does not attain fulfillment, it is only conscious of itself as of an unendurable gaping void from which it must seek protection at any price. Anyone who is absorbed does not know this void; he is as it were caught up in plenitude, life envelops him and protects him. Boredom, on the contrary, is not only bound up with inaction but with a dismantling process.
From page 83-84 of “The Mystery of the Family” in Homo Viator by Gabriel Marcel (1965).
