Some time around 2020 I read an article (or more likely, watched a TikTok) where some woman claimed that there is no such thing as laziness. And while I wanted to be snide about this, because deep down I’m quite a Victorian Fresh air and hard work sort of person, the concept really struck a chord.
The woman in question had a blue fringe and a lot of facial piercings and seemed to think that communism was a viable idea in 2020 so I’m not saying she had all good ideas. But her theory went along these lines: if you cannot do something, there is a reason. Maybe you’re genuinely tired? Maybe you’re burned out? Maybe your approach to the task is wrong, or this isn’t the right moment to start working on that specific thing, or maybe you just don’t feel that the task is the best use of your time right now. Maybe you’re not lazy, maybe you’re just attaching a negative description to morally neutral situations.
The concept that laziness doesn’t exist appealed to me a great deal, because in childhood I was often described as lazy, which always felt unfair, but I could never quite articulate why. The main indicator that I was lazy because I didn’t do homework often, but it wasn’t that I didn’t want to do my homework it was that I literally couldn’t make myself. No matter how interesting I found the subject, or how stressful I knew that making up an excuse was going to be, I still just somehow got to the end of the school day and something just sort of, stalled. I think these days we called that undiagnosed ADHD but it really was deeply frustrating going through life thinking that if I just put a better revision timetable together I’d be able to make myself work.
It also led to the misconception that I was deeply special, because despite being ‘lazy’ I was academically robust and left school with top grades despite having done literally no revision. This seemed to be more impressive than getting great grades having worked really hard and was sort of lauded by my friends and family, creating a very unhelpful internal belief that doing well without trying is actually way more impressive than putting your shoulder to the wheel.
Anyway, when I saw this woman ‘explain’ that there’s no such thing as laziness, I felt sort of vindicated that my greatest character flaw was actually not a flaw at all. It didn’t matter that I occasionally called in sick when I couldn’t face working, laid in bed until eleven on the weekend, let huge piles of clothes build up in my bedroom and took a taxi because I couldn’t be bothered to walk to the tube, and hated myself for it. All of which was laziness. Or, if this woman is to believed, acts of self care caused by a busy life and an overloaded anxious brain.
But then I had a baby, and learned that I’d been far too nice to myself. Babies don’t care if you’re tired or burned out. They don’t have extensions to deadlines for extenuating circumstances. The baby cries until it gets what it needs and if you fail to provide what it needs, it dies. There is no grey area with babies. Get it right, or fail. And during that period of my life, I wasn’t lazy. I realised that no-one was coming to save me and I cracked on with it. And in my slightly martyred state I decided that I was cured of laziness, and that everything I’d previously believed was bollocks, that anyone who doesn’t have a newborn is inherently lazy and that I was basically the only person working hard in the entire world.
Having a new baby does not make you very nice to be around, sometimes. Or very rational. I’m glad I kept those feelings on the inside.
Several years on, I’ve settled into a more nuanced take on laziness in general. II do believe that laziness exists, and I do accept that I can sometimes be lazy. I certainly never want to go and get my own Stanley cup from upstairs if I can get my fiancee (oh - we got engaged, by the way!) to do it for me.
Having that kind of laziness perpetually indulged is bad for me. It is dangerous to be too permissive in the quest for tolerance, and telling people that no matter what they do, they’re not lazy, is exactly that. Sometimes you should get out of bed, wash your hair and be a big girl rather than lying around, and you will feel better for it. But I think that the blue haired woman was on to something, in the sense that laziness a symptom, not a diagnosis. I took dozens and dozens of black cabs as a new mum because I couldn’t face public transport and there was laziness there, but the laziness was exhaustion and lack of confidence. I procrastinate on projects which I should be busting my arse on, and that is lazy, but it’s lazy because I’m scared to start writing in case I screw it up. I do sometimes order take-away rather than cook or lie on the sofa watching TikTok rather than writing, and those are acts of laziness but they’re also diagnostic about how my life is going more generally, and as such they shouldn’t be written off as a character flaw but used as an amber warning sign on the emotional dashboard.
How about you? Are you lazy?
I am very hard working and very lazy at the same time, dependent on the task at hand!
I’m so lazy! :) I call it undisciplined, though, which I think is true. But yes, self-care, being less dunning on oneself, these things are important too. I like your fresh writing.