On Being Lazy

Norman Greenbaum – Spirit in the Sky

Everyone’s lazy. In fact, the idea of laziness boarders on absurd.

The dictionary definition of lazy is “moving slowly and gently”. If we go by this strict definition, then I can understand some cocaine fiends or overachievers claiming they aren’t lazy. Of course, the exclusive use of the dictionary severely inhibits our ability to understand modern spoken English.

“Hey that’s cool” becomes, “Hey that is neither warm nor very cold”. Why thank you, it was my intention to make this article fit those exact descriptors of temperature.

Allow me to demonstrate:












This cat is not moving slowly, nor is it moving gently. In fact, this cat is not moving. This cat is being lazy. But why is this cat being lazy? The only time this cat would be being lazy would be when he isn’t doing something someone else wants him to do. If no one wanted him to do anything, he wouldn’t be being lazy. He would be relaxing.

So who are these people that want us to do something else? It could be a marital partner, a roommate, parents, friends, or even society. Society, through its own evolution that has managed to completely ignore everything that its inhabitants have asked of it, has developed its own idea of what the world should be doing. Specific to the topic at hand, you should be “contributing”.

Could you be a little more vague please? Contribute to what? The economy? The standard of living? The planet? Let me, in my 70something years of existing, personally do something to directly affect a planet that has existed for billions of years. A planet that regularly wipes out all life on it because it gets bored and decides to roll around in an ice cube for a few centuries. Don’t worry though, by doing something utterly mundane and with no direct benefit to my life I can contribute to the planet. That cigarette butt was the end of the world, I promise.

Being lazy means doing what you want, when you want, no matter the direct or indirect pressure to be doing something else someone else wants you to do. Odd, when it’s put like that doesn’t that sound like being “free”? Isn’t being “free” something that is revered throughout the world? Not being lazy though. Being lazy is bad for everyone.

So how is everyone lazy? Certainly everyone isn’t free.

True. There are those who are openly lazy. The Zen masters of laziness. They hitch rides, bum smokes, borrow money, eat your food, live on your couch and overall live a happy, carefree life doing whatever they feel like doing. They also tend to live a lot longer.

On the other hand, there are also those who genuinely enjoy working. They enjoy getting up for work in the morning, performing their routine, and crunching numbers or whatever it is that they do. No one is telling them to do it, right?

Unless you’re the first of the android invasion, no one is ready to live an entire life based on a schedule someone else makes for them. They work day in and day out so that, one day, they can finally sit back and let their money, family and life take care of themselves. They reap what they’ve sown. They get to be lazy.

Everyone strives for that day they can finally just be lazy. For some people, that day is the first day of self-consciousness. For others, that day starts with a party hat and a big cake that says “Happy Retirement”. In the end, though, we’re all striving for the same ultimate, tangible, and obvious reward of being free from care and worry. Of being lazy.