LAZINESS: AN EVOLVING CONCEPT
Are human beings lazy by nature?
What is laziness?
Laziness is a feminine noun derived from the Latin pigritia.
According to dictionaries, it can mean anything from a simple lack of desire to perform a task to a deep aversion to work.
It is also associated with negligence, indolence, slowness, delay or disinterest in acting.
But laziness goes further than that. It can be:
- a feeling of generalised demotivation;
- the unconscious choice of the easiest path;
- the search for the easiest, the ready-made, what is done by others – whether a person or a machine;
- the desire to expend as little energy as possible;
- the tendency to do things ‘any old way’ — or simply not to do them at all;
- copying instead of creating;
- wanting benefits without costs;
- desiring pleasure without pain.
Warning!
Laziness can also manifest itself as a necessary moment of idleness, a break from activities, a temporary suspension of formal obligations. But it can also be an unconscious way of avoiding tasks that require more than we are willing (or allowed) to give internally.
LAZINESS IN PSYCHOLOGY
Curiously, traditional psychology has paid little attention to laziness. Leonard Carmichael, a 20th-century psychologist, observed that ‘laziness is not a word that appears in the index of most technical psychology books’. In other words, there is no solid theoretical corpus that directly addresses it.
However, it is essential to make some important distinctions:
- Tiredness is not laziness.
- Lack of energy can be related to emotional or physical exhaustion or even clinical conditions.
- Laziness, on the other hand, is often a state of active avoidance, and perceiving it requires constant self-awareness and listening to one’s body.
LAZINESS AND CHARACTER
Laziness feeds on the logic of advantage and opportunism.
When we surrender to the law of least effort as a habitual way of living, we begin to want to take advantage of everything — and the line between laziness and wickedness becomes blurred.
For this reason, it can be said that bad
character stems from laziness.
LAZINESS AND INERTIA
“Show me where you don’t develop, and I’ll show you where you’re lazy.”
Laziness is
the sister of inertia. It appears whenever we choose to repeat instead of create, to reproduce instead of transform. The
lazy person says, “But I’ve learned to do it this way…”
Or they simply don’t think, they just act automatically.
In laziness, thought is replaced by imagination.
There is an almost viral functioning: repeat, repeat, repeat.
There is no development. There is no elaboration. Only inertia.
THINKING IS DIFFERENT FROM IMAGINING
The lazy person asks, “Why think, if I can imagine?”
But thinking is very different from imagining.
Thinking is a conscious, organised process with a direction and a purpose.
Thinking is ‘weighing up’ the possibilities, evaluating the pros and cons.
It is recognising that every choice involves losses and gains.
It is distinguishing what is real from what only appears to be.
Thinking works with data:
it organises what is captured by the body, emotions and imagination.
It eliminates excesses, filters illusions and processes meaning.
It brings order to the inner home.
Reality will always be less than the imagination.
Thinking is recognising limits.
Imagining is losing oneself in infinity.
A CHALLENGE FOR YOU
Observe your life.
Choose an area in which you feel you are not evolving, that you are stuck, stagnant.
- In your profession, do you feel like a professional or just an amateur?
- How much illusion (imagination) and laziness have you deposited there?
- What part of your life still depends on others? In what areas have you not yet developed autonomy?
Truly overcoming laziness requires confrontation.
Start with an honest look, willing to leave your comfort zone and take on the inner work of transformation.
Texto elaborado por: Jaqueline Cássia de Oliveira Psicóloga - CRP 04/7521 Psicoterapeuta Familiar Sistêmica Fonte: Curso Zélia Nascimento