Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.– Sam Keen
No, no, no, don’t get me wrong.
I’m not the founding president of the Juan Tamad for Tongressman Movement, and I’m not advocating the negative and nefarious kind of laziness exemplified by our former Spanish colonizers. Since it’s so hot now, isn’t it a good idea to slow down, be lazy and really, really relax for those of us who can’t get out of the rat race or are working our butts off?
For those who clandestinely text, gossip or doze off during office hours, stop reading this column on the art and luxury of laziness. Get back to work you bum!
I’m glad that in Europe, a certain Slow Food Movement is steadily gaining ground against the unhealthy fast food culture pioneered by the Americans. I admire the technological innovations, the vibrant democracy and trend-setting entertainment of the Yanks, but I can’t for the life of me stand their barbaric, unedible and yucky fast food! How can the cardboard-tasting, bland and high-cholesterol burgers compare with the artistic splendor of traditional Chinese lauriat cuisines, the delectable elegance of French food or even the deliciousness of slow-cooked Spanish paellas!
Let us not surrender to this onslaught of the so-called modern rush-and-hurry fast food culture of the West. What’s wrong with being lazy and eating at a leisurely pace while savoring each morsel and spoonful of exquisitely delightful food? Aren’t our stomachs also built to savor slow foods?
The world has really turned around since the days of our forebears. In the past banks of old used to teach people to save money for a better future, while the modern financial institutions nowadays relentlessly push consumers to spend quickly with credit cards. The banks are also encouraging instantaneous cash withdrawals with the ubiquitous Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) open 24 hours daily.
In the richer economies of the West to even China, fancy public transport systems have accelerated travel, but are our lives any better? Ours is the era of the supersonic jet, bullet trains, speedboats, racer bikes and fast cars. How I long for the good old days of Manila’s horse-drawn calesas and the Pasig River bancas which used to make our lives more leisurely. Even the pre-war tranvia destroyed during the Japanese war was a more aesthetic part of our urban landscape than the LRT structures that are like fat concrete pythons snaking chaotically through our crowded city streets and traffic-jammed highways.
Old-timers recount that when our penniless immigrant ancestors in the Ching Dynasty returned to Fujian province as well-off traders from Hispanic Manila, they could afford not to walk long by riding on wooden sedan chairs or kio carried by laborers. Were the pre-Hispanic datus and rajahs of the Philippines also like that, before the Spanish conquistadors brusquely disrupted their languorous existence?
If only we could live in a perfect world. I would rather have the old transport systems which may be slow rather than our present fast cars with undisciplined drivers, unruly buses, crazy jeepneys or reckless trucks which conspire daily to create traffic jams and ignite our tempers. If not a return to the old-fashioned modes of transport, why not a return to civility?
Perhaps, it wouldn’t be such a wacky out-of-this-world idea to promulgate a few car-less or truck-less days every month, so that we may be forced to walk more or ride pollution-free and healthier bicycles once in a rare while.
Daydreaming is one of the positive forms of laziness that we should allow ourselves to indulge in, to stimulate our creative juices and to allow us to fathom totally unexplored possibilities in science, poetry, arts, philosophy and other endeavors. I reckon that many of the most creative geniuses were daydreamers who were lazy, but whose minds roamed freely without frontiers or limits.
For my office staff who wonder why I spend a whole afternoon once-a-week incommunicado, not going about my usual business chores, cloistered in my room while daydreaming, surrounded by books and music and writing my columns, this is actually a productive, creative and positive form of wholesome laziness!
A lot of the earth-shaking ideas may have been wrought by the lazy inactivity of daydreaming. Was Isaac Newton daydreaming under a tree when an apple fell and inspired his discovery of the theory of gravity? How about Shakespeare daydreaming his poems and plays? Actress Elizabeth Hurley once said, "Nothing irritates me more than chronic laziness in others. Mind you, it’s only mental sloth I object to. Physical sloth can be heavenly."
US author Grenville Kleiser opined, "Periods of wholesome laziness, after days of energetic effort, will wonderfully tone up the mind and body." It is not only the mind and the body that benefit from wholesome laziness, even our emotions and the quality of our love life do.
A positive form of romantic laziness is preferable to the harried, hurrying, oft cynical hunt for love matches. There will be less divorce, legal separation, dysfunctional marriages or unhappy spouses if people take the time to express real affections. Slow, passionate sex within the context of romantic love, instead of the nihilistic, fastfood-like, Hollywood-inspired, often adulterous drive-in motel sex or one-night stands which lead to heartache and angst.
How many of us miss courtship rituals like the serenade of olden times, the incomparable art of elegant handwritten love letters complete with immortal poetry on finest stationeries? Why is it that in the technologically-advanced world, a lot of us seem to be more uncouth, barbaric and less civilized with our loves?
Like good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, there is positive laziness which I claim to be an advocate of and there is negative, morally-corrosive, unproductive, corrupt and good-for-nothing laziness of which many of our politicians, bureaucrats and other bums in the power elite are shamelessly guilty of.
Why does our so-called modern world abdicate our human right to wholesome laziness, allowing the predominance of fast-food, junk food, instant coffee, instant noodles, microwaveable food, overwork and other discomforts? I believe that not being able to exercise wholesome laziness is not life, it is an insidious form of suicide or taking in poison in small doses.
It is sad that many of us are sidetracked by the obsessive pursuit of material comforts that we forget to set aside time for God, family and for recharging our batteries. What’s wrong with a little laziness once in a while? Why not get off the rat race? After all we are not rats!