Laziness

I heard someone refer to herself yesterday as 'just lazy'. Then today my friend told me that her child was just lazy. This prompts me to think about what 'lazy' means.

I can't honestly say that I've met many people in my life, if any, who are lazy by nature. In fact, I believe that people are only what we refer to as 'lazy' when they aren't motivated to do what they, or anyone else, thinks they should be doing. Left to our own devices, I think that most of us would rather be doing something with our time, rather than nothing. If we're avoiding a task, then I suspect we're avoiding it because there's something about it that scares us or doesn't feel right.

I wonder what that phrase 'can't be bothered' really means. If something 'bothers' me, then it makes me feel badly; it's irritating. Maybe it really means that I don't want to be bothered by the task. I might not even consciously know why.

When I have been labeled lazy in my life, I could, and still can, immediately conjure up the heavy feeling in my body. My limbs feel like they're weighted down with lead. My stomach almost feels full. I feel tired and my brain goes fuzzy. In fact, it feels like my brain just won't work, like when the bushing went on the gear shift in my car and I just couldn't get it into first gear.

This doesn't feel lazy to me. It feels like resistance. And looking at why I'm resisting is probably more productive than feeling guilty for being 'lazy' or feeling resentful about being pushed. I'm a person who is naturally interested in the world. If someone comes to fix the furnace, I want to watch the process and ask questions. I want to know who was on the phone and where you're going. I've been called nosy for just these reasons. How can someone who is that nosy be lazy - about anything?

No, I think that 'laziness' is a passive form of resistance. The body and the psyche say, "Nope. We're not doing this. It isn't right. End of story." I think it indicates some form of internal conflict. If I really felt, inside myself, that not doing whatever I was supposed to was okay, I would just go on and do something else. But if I felt that I 'should' do it and I'm not comfortable with my reasons for not doing it, or I felt that I would end up in a fight that I couldn't win, then I might shut down and seem lazy.

I think it's worth our while to take a look at what it could be about the task that might not feel right to us, and why. I think this is especially important for parents and bosses. Yelling at the person, or punishing them, or even shaming them, isn't likely to remove the impasse and will give you heart burn. Equally, self-criticism won't make me want to do what I'm avoiding and will just make me feel worse.

So here's my closing metaphor: If I have a great big snarl of yarn and I can't knit with it, yanking at it isn't going to get the snarl unknotted. I would have to gently tease it apart - and then make sure I don't put it back into the same place where it became snarled up in the first place, or it will happen again.

Amen.