On Sloth

"The path of awakening is a process. It’s a process of gradually learning to become intimate with our so-called obstacles. So rather than feeling discouraged by laziness, we could look into our laziness, become curious about laziness. We could get to know laziness profoundly. We can unite with laziness, be our laziness, know its smell and taste, feel it fully in our bodies. The spiritual path is a process of relaxing into this very moment of being. "

~Buddhist Meditation on Laziness, from the Shambhala Sun

“Sloth views the towers of Fame with envious eyes,
Desirous still, yet impotent to rise.”

~William Shenstone, Scottish poet

Well, sure, I guess that makes sense. One of the central tenets of Buddhism is that the pursuit of one's desires is a primary source of human suffering. The Scots, on the other hand, have always believed in the 'run in, steal stuff, and run away' as a pretty good strategy for material gain. This is a race that could run through briar patchs wearing skirts with no underwear. You have to give them that they were a pretty tough and industrious people.

So Sloth is generally defined as physical or mental apathy; in Christian times this meant putting off or not doing what God intended you to do. Which is pretty unfair, if you ask me, because according to the Bible stories I remember, God tended to be kind of vague with the instructions. His way of asking Moses to round up the Chosen People and get them to agree to wander the desert for forty years was to set a bush on fire. I probably wouldn't have gotten it. With Abraham He used the rather unclear metaphor of appearing as a smoking brazier and pillars of smoke and fire to let Abraham know to go to the Promised Land. He's God, so I guess He can do whatever He wants, but maybe if you really want someone to do something then you should be a little more clear. I guess He got kind of annoyed after He went to all the trouble of writing the Ten Commandments in stone tablets, and people still kept breaking them relentlessly for the next 2,000 years.

So in our modern times and in the absence of flaming shrubbery, sloth means not so much disobeying God but not living up to one's full potential. I ask, is that so bad? If we were all living to our full potential all the time, then companies would be all management and no staff. Getting an "A" in school would have no meaning because no one else was getting Bs, Cs or Fs. No one would be dating anyone, because they'd all be waiting for their best possible match. Everyone would be high achieving, neurotic workaholics with inflated titles who couldn't hold together a fulfilling relationship because of impossibly high expectations.

Oh wait, that's my entire generation.

Now, I am not advocating the kind of sloth that results in having to be crane-lifted through a hole in the roof when one dies, wearing a muumuu and a patina of Double Stuff Oreos and KFC grease. No, I advocate a more moderate form of sloth. Achievement is a brilliant thing, in its place. But have we, as a generation, forgotten how to be lazy?

Take vacations. Does anyone go to Hawaii anymore? There is nothing really to do in Hawaii, as far as I know. All you're supposed to do there is drink things out of coconuts, lie on the beach, turn over occasionally, and fan oneself. I'm pretty sure the hotels don't even have gym equipment. But I never hear of anyone going there anymore. All people want to do on vacation these days is rack up yet another achievement. It's still a competition. They're either humping up Mount Kilimanjaro or running away from marauding bulls in Spain or spending the week fighting off a bad bout of dysentery in Vanuatu. I guess climbing 3,000 stairs to ascend to Maccu Pichu is a really great break from the bustle of our modern lifesyle, which probably includes a gym routine involving hours on....the stair climber. I just don't get it. Civil unrest, disease and physical hardship aren't frequently featured on postcards, and for good reason.

It's like we have no idea how to simply be anymore. Even activities which are supposed to be relaxing are no longer sacred. Yoga either has to go faster, like Power Yoga, or the heat has to be cranked up to forty degrees to make it harder. Walking is no longer even considered worthwhile unless you are goose-stepping along like the Third Reich and constantly checking your heart rate. Television is no longer about entertainment. It's about reality TV. Since when do we spend all day in reality only to want to come home and watch more of it on TV? There's no escape.

The large majority of professionals I know spend about two or three hours a day engaged in productive, focused work, another three hours on urgent but unimportant busy work, and another four hours where they do absolutely nothing. I think this is because on some subconscious level, we resent having to be there for ten hours, five or six days a week. The argument goes that our economy has become dependent on these long hours and would crumble if we instituted a shortened workday or three day weekend. But I doubt it.

The average US worker works 1,777 hours a year. That's a lot, considering that the number factors in people who work part-time and is after allowing for annual vacation. Canadians work 1,717 (60 hours, coincidentally enough, is the average number of hours Canadians spend watching hockey in a year.) The countries with the highest working hours are Poland and the Czech Republic, topped only by Korea with 2,300 hours per year. Ever notice that at no time in history have people been trying to get into the Czech Republic? Or Poland? Nope, as far as I remember you always hear stories about people desperately trying to get out. And no wonder.

Who works the least of the developed nations? Sweden and the Netherlands. And these have to be the most smug countries in the world; they're the Reese Witherspoons of the UN. Their citizens only work about 1,300 hours a year, and yet their economies somehow manage. In fact, Sweden is widely touted as having some of the best talent and most innovative business practices in the world. They have a strong export economy, are politically stable, have free childcare and heavily-subsidized higher education. Weird that all those lazy people are able to pull off what the rest of the modern world hasn't been able to at a much higher level of work output.

Is it because they pay such high taxes? Perhaps, I don't know. But we pay high taxes in Canada too, and those Swedes are working way less than us, so the efficiencies must be coming from somewhere.

If you ask me, spiritual apathy is much more likely to flow from this kind of hysterical over-achieving than from a few bouts of reflection and quiet recovery, even if you have to have them while wearing stretchy-waist pants. But in order to give ourselves some downtime, we need to stop rewarding the corporate culture that makes people brag about being on a first-name basis with the janitorial night staff and accruing three months worth of untaken vacation. When someone tells you that they're going to spend their week off base jumping in Acapulco or doing an altitude marathon in the Andes, slap them in to the nearest hammock. They'll thank you one day.

After all, vague signs or no vague signs, even God took a break on the seventh day, and he created the universe. If all you're responsible for creating is quarterly reports...

...give thyself a break.