2025-04-28

On the Subject of Laziness

There's something profoundly satisfying about preparing food for other people. I'm not particularly good at it yet, but I've found that the more effort I put into preparing a meal for people (usually just my little family), the better I feel about it. Throwing a frozen pizza in the oven or slapping some simple deli meat and sliced cheese sandwiches together is fine, but there's something actually joyful about it when there's a process of preparing ingredients, cooking them, getting into that rhythm to try and do it all efficiently and be able to serve the food while it's still nice and warm. I imagine most people realized this long before I did, but I have led a very uncomplicated - and let's face it, often lazy - life. Not that I've only just now started providing meals for my family. I think it's just that I've started putting more effort and thought into it recently.

On the subject of laziness: I imagine there are all sorts of different reasons why people are lazy. Or, to potentially make it sound less offensive: "unambitious." I get the feeling that yes, there are some people who genuinely delight in their laziness, in getting away with as little as possible, expending as little effort as they can, getting out of anything that might be considered "work". But I don't think I'm one of them, and I would hazard a guess that it's not this way for most people who are considered lazy. I don't do a little jig of glee every time I avoid doing something that I didn't want to do. I like to feel and be productive how I can. I like to be dependable. I hate the idea of regularly sitting around not doing anything. I feel miserable if I go a day without having accomplished anything that would be considered useful in a practical sense.

I feel like I was trying to go somewhere with this. Maybe I'm just engaging in some self-analysis. I've generally enjoyed living a simple and unambitious life, and I do take umbrage at being given guff for this. Why always the push to never be content with what you've got? As if refusing to ever be satisfied is some kind of glorious, divinely-appointed meritorious attitude that all mankind must embrace, else they be shunned and considered a detriment to society. It just seems so obviously harmful, demotivating, and self-destructive to embrace this kind of attitude, and yet it seems to be an extremely prominent thing that most people find worthy of praise and admiration.

To be clear, I'm not saying nobody should be ambitious. Ambitious people get things done and can push positive progress. I'm just saying that not *everyone* needs to be ambitious. We need people who are content to work with and maintain what we've already got. No program or system is going to actually function if everyone refuses to accept it because they're only looking forward for whatever's past it, or what's next, or what could be.

I like to see what's been made to work, and to find out how to allow that to keep working effectively for me or my situation. I like maintaining a good dependable system. I don't want to waste time constantly trying to figure out new ways to accomplish something when there's already something working just fine. Stop pitching me ideas that require reworking or retooling or reinventing - I've got something working already, I'm good! Sure, I understand that some other way may technically be "better", but if I'm not suffering for what I've got now, what's the big deal?

Not that I'm against some upgrades and improvements from time to time, but good grief, man - I feel like humanity is just throwing itself more and more into this idea that there always has to be something new, something different, something better, something shinier, something more efficient, something more profitable, *anything* other than *what we already have that's already working* because *if it's already a thing then it's "old" and if it's old then it's bad because we should never be content, we should always be pushing for better and more.*

An Edward Abbey quote comes to mind: "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

It's frustrating to be looked down on for being willing, able, and even happy to utilize and make do with what already is, what I've already got. And it's frustrating to see other people be constantly frustrated because they refuse to allow themselves to be satisfied with what they've got. They want to be constantly chasing some goal post in the distance. Whenever they reach a goal post, they immediately look for another one to go chasing after. I understand that for some people this can bring genuine joy and positive drive, but I wish that wasn't being sold as the only worthwhile way for any human being to think or live.

On a related note: Hobbits are my favorite of Tolkien's peoples.