Chapter 1: Basic
Understanding of Laziness
The word laziness is used with
very negative connotations. Beginning from childhood, you are egged by every older
human being to refrain from being lazy. “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop”
you are reminded every time. Sadly enough, people use the words lazy and idle interchangeably.
Nothing can be far from justice, not only to English as a language but also to
the proud people who personify the idea of laziness. Idleness is simply a state
of ‘not working’. Laziness is an inherent loathing in an individual against a
particular activity or any activity that can be classified under the heading ‘work’.
An idle person may not be lazy. A lazy person however may often be found idling.
The laziest person according to
the recorded history of the earth (post the age of the dinosaurs of course) was
a man named Jerome Klapka Jerome. Having spent 27 years of his early life in absolute
laziness, he attained enlightenment. Under influence of this new found Buddha
hood, Jerome decided to compile his life’s lazing into a single manual for the reference
and enlightenment of future generations of indolent people. He surrendered his
virgin laziness (until then) to put together “The Idle Thoughts of an Idle
Fellow”. And believe me guys he never got to be lazy again amidst one book
after the other, amidst publishers and editors. The poor dude sacrificed his shiftless
lay-about life for fellow lazy beings- Hail Lazy Jesus!
It infuriates me no end to see foolish
people making generalizations about laziness and lazy people. You call a guy who sleeps 15 hours a day,
lazy? Come on buddy cut the poor guy some slack. He is just tired, let him
sleep. A dude qualifies to be lazy when he lies for 15 hours on his bed listening
to sparrows chirping outside his window, or looking at the ceiling fan trying
to figure out in what probability it may fall off. Being lazy is not easy boss.
Agreed, that every individual has potential to be lazy, but, it requires years
of cultivation, nurture and practice to become really lazy.
Another outrageous thing about
people is their tendency to stereotype. Dude, listen to me, all lazy people do
not sit on the couch, eat potato chips and watch TV. Are you bloody serious,
in thinking that? That’s racist dude, believe me. People manifest laziness in multiple ways. No two lazy people are the same. It’s just like the mutants in
X-Men. However unlike the X-Men mutants, with practice one can imbibe other
forms of laziness to become versatile, multifaceted.
The most common types of laziness
you will see (apart from the lying-on-couch-watching-TV) are, ‘sitting-at-window-watching-road’,
‘missing-bath-till-seasons-change’, ‘not-sweeping-room-till-dust-allergy’, ‘counting-raindrops-on-telephone-wires’,’counting-stars-lying-on-terrace’,’not-taking-out-trash-till-becomes-ant’s-pilgrimage’,
‘lying-on-floor-watching-ants-foraging’,’catching-mosquitoes-collecting-in-a-jar’,’wearing-same-denims-without-washing-everyday-till-it-gets-torn’,’sitting-and-chewing-fingernails’……..
So on and so forth. The plethora of attributes is simply mind boggling. Believe
me; you can’t count them on all your fingers, or toes, or even your families,
or neighbors’ fingers and toes. You see, you should understand the diversity among
lazy people before indiscriminately and often wrongly calling someone lazy.
Please understand, you insult us that way and undermine our being.
It takes years of idling and
laying about to become a Lazy-Master. People have spent life times in the
pursuit of various forms of laziness to become Grandmasters. Having practiced the
art for more than three decades, I can tell you one thing, Laziness is a gift,
but only very few can sustain it. Believe me my friend, it looks easy to you.
But it’s very hard being lazy and surviving in today’s competitive world. Your
parents, relatives, peers will kill the god gifted laziness that’s inside you.
In order to keep your indolence alive you have to adapt. You have to acquire a
certain degree of spirituality to move forward on your chosen path of laziness.
The first thing that harms
laziness is Ego. You have to let go of that to be happily lazy. People’s
opinion about you must not bother you. As long as you are satisfied with
yourself, the world can go to hell.
The second thing that is very
important for survival is letting go. You cannot possibly keep all the reins in
your hand and think of idling peacefully. Let go of the reins, and sink in into
the sensation of deep relaxation.
The third thing is to stay away
from needless physical luxuries that only bring weakness and dependence.
Moreover if you are sensible enough you have already realized that a life
dedicated to laziness does not offer you too many opportunities of luxury and
sense gratification. Therefore you should not get too attached to having or
using such means.
The fourth thing very important
is your sustenance. My personal approach is maintaining good sense of taste in
food (when someone else is preparing the food) but being a Spartan eater (I am not talking about quantity here), when you have to cook your own food.
You cannot possibly stay lazy and yet cook yourself a three course dinner. Any
lazy person’s guide book will tell you that the best thing to eat is a mash of
every possible food ingredient boiled with ample amount of water. That way, you
get all the nutrients, keep unwanted fats out and also the gruel consistency of
the food reduces the need to chew. Moreover it saves you a lot of effort in
preparation. The effort can be further reduced if you can eat right out of the
cooking utensil, so you need not wash an extra plate.
If you are able to surpass these
few obstacles, then Voila, you are ready to tread the path of laziness. I hope
I have been able to impress upon you the fact that being lazy is actually very
difficult. Please show us some respect, though we hardly care if you don’t. But
please do not insult us by calling some random loser ‘lazy’. We too got some
class, man! And we resist (though mutely) any sacrilege of the sanctity of our religion
of laziness.
Okay guys that’s enough talk for a
day….got some very important work to do…..downloading a movie on Bit Torrent…..got
to track its progress.
Buen Dia.
