It is all the good that you are a hardworking person endowed with qualities and virtues, which are considered admirable in a human being, rather it is fantastic, marvelous, superb, but please, it does not mean that you can abuse those who are not like you.
Many narrow-minded, prejudiced bigots discriminate others on the basis of religion, race, caste, nationality, skin color, physical appearance, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, etc. I have nothing against such people. Poor souls, they themselves must have been victims of one or other type of discrimination, hence could be suffering from inferiority complex. They have every reason to vent their frustrations.
What I find most offensive is a type of discrimination which is widely prevalent all over the world, yet, no one speaks against it. Even I find myself on the receiving end. Amir Khan Sir, the Satyamev Jayate crusader, how much more should we suffer before you take up the cudgels for our issue?
Just because we are disinclined or reluctant to do or say anything, does not authorize anyone to demean us by calling names such as, sluggard or sloth.
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Sleeping Lioness by Anna Pinchuk |
I personally prefer the word indolent, but lazy, spoken with good connotations, is also acceptable. For your benefit, in the next few lines, I will explain how to pronounce the word, lazy. First you have to think about beautiful things, such as sleeping beauty, or a lioness resting in a scenic jungle, or a crocodile lying in a pond filled with lotuses, and of cool breeze and enchanting fragrances. Now, tilt your head a little backward to look relaxed, then stretch the corners of your lips towards the ears to bring a pleasant expression, and then with the tip of your tongue touch the roof of your mouth behind the back of your front teeth and make ‘ley’ sound with your vocal cords, while detaching the tip of your tongue and stretching your lips vertically apart. After that, to pronounce ‘zee’, tilt your head down, once again pull the corners of the lips back, bring the teeth closer, keep the tip of your tongue down, slightly touching bottom front teeth, while with the top of your tongue you should touch the roof of your mouth, here is the main trick—the top of the tongue should touch either side of the roof, while leaving a passage for air in the middle from where you will release air while making ‘zeeee…’ sound with your vocal cords. In this way, lazy will sound full of love and kindness.
There may be biological reasons behind our inertia, but most of the time we indulge in it because our motivations and ambitions are different from ordinary people. We find our long retreats into the world of unconsciousness better than anything else in the world.
Some people are physically lazy and some are mentally lazy. The people from the first category often make rules for others, while those in the second category always follow rules made by others. Those who are both physically and mentally lazy are the best. They neither preach others, nor follow anyone else’s doctrine.
Laziness is also mentioned in the ancient scriptures of all the major religions. For example, sloth is among the seven deadly sins in Christianity, but guess what, the Christian God himself has been resting for past thousands of years after working for only six days. Quran also advocates against laziness in terms of
Jihad-al-Nafs, meaning struggle against self, but the term is enough to take life out of me. Hindu philosophy preaches
Karma yoga, in which you have to keep working without any expectations. I would rather prefer
Bhakti yoga, where I have to only chant Rama-Rama, and it can be done in a supine position as well. My favorite
yoga posture is
Shawasana, in which all I have to do is lie down as if I am dead.
Now I want to ask you a question a la Amir SJ Khan. The question is, "Who makes this world a better place?"
If you said, “Hardworking people,” you are way off the track!
My research suggests that if all the people in this world were industrious, ambitious, competitive, aggressive, they would have destroyed this planet a long time ago either by over consumption or nuclear power, or would have sold it to the aliens. Activists like Al Gore have homes that consume 20 times more energy than the national average. They travel in private jets that guzzle enormous amount of fossil fuel and cause extensive pollution. It is far better to be a lazy saint than an industrious sinner. Lazy people may seem like burden to their immediate families, but if you consider the larger picture, they are the ones responsible for mother earth’s well being. If not for them, the world would have run out of resources hundreds of years ago.The real green heroes in this world are the unsung inactivists from past and present.
Lazy people detest travelling and save tons of fuel. I rarely go out of the house, and spend very little on consumer products. Lazy people are like hermits, who don’t have peer pressure. Even when we are at home, we consume the least amount of energy because using water or electricity needs a lot of effort on our part. We eat very little because inactivity slows down our metabolism. Inactivity also deteriorates the functioning of our internal organs and we make the ultimate sacrifice by dying young and leaving very few carbon footprints.
Besides saving earth’s resources, we are also responsible for the relative world peace. By default, most of the lazy people are pacifists. They accept life as it is, never pick up a fight, never argue or crib or complain. For the same reason, a lazy person would never become a terrorist or a soldier, nor would he go out and indulge in stone pelting or arson during events like
Bharat Bandh.
After reading this article, I hope you will stop being harsh towards lazy people. Since charity begins at home, if your spouse or any other family member shows symptoms of laziness, please pledge at this very moment that you would never be an obstacle in their pursuit of idleness, and would let them remain in bed or on couch for as long as they want. Live and let live.
For the past few days, I have been trying to read this book,
The Right to be Lazy, but as soon as I read a few lines, I fall asleep. I have also been struggling with “
Ode on Indolence” by John Keats.