LAZINESS IS GOOD FOR YOU....

I slept late this morning. I am not ashamed to say it, as for me sleeping in is in some way therapeutic (well, that’s my excuse!). I say to myself ‘I will be better for it, make my brain better able to cope with whatever life throws at me’.

I am in no doubt my (subjective view) is correct, but I wish I could rationalise in this way every time I feel “lazy”. In some strange way, this ‘fine laziness’ has been given a bad name; it’s easy to see how this came about. If the result of laziness were hunger, I would say “impossible”, since hunger makes laziness impossible.

Many even say that ‘laziness’ is sinful; I wonder why, since it could be argued that it is a relaxation heavy with activity, a sense of rest from which directed activity will emerge. Maybe most ‘busyness’ is a type of nervous tic….

An acquaintance straightens his pictures, puts his books in an appropriate order depending upon size and subject matter; he is not lazy but very active – but to what end? If he would relax with his feet up and a cold beer readily to hand, and if he should examine his pictures and books with a more relaxed (lazy?) attitude he might suggest to himself “I am in effect, trying to impose my will, my sense of ‘rightness’ on inanimate objects. But maybe this is wrong as they have no sense of ‘rightness’ and it matters not at all to them whether they are straight or crooked, so what the hell! So I shall sit here and enjoy my laziness and my beer."

How can such a process have become a shame and a sin? Surely, only in laziness can one achieve a state of contemplation, a balancing act of values, a weighing oneself against the world. A busy man has no time for such balancing. A lazy man cannot commit murder, theft or even lead a mob. I know I could not. How about you?

Until next time (and very contemplative),

Peripatetic Scribe