There Is No Such Thing as Laziness

Ok, to be fair, that title is a little inflammatory. Perhaps the truer thesis is that when you use the word “lazy” to describe a person - especially as a personality trait, but even sometimes as a temporary condition or a feeling - you are almost always referencing a concept that is accepted as common vernacular, but nonetheless is not a thing that actually exists in the real universe. There’s no such thing as a person who is just inherently lazy or unwilling to work to get what they want. Though there are countless examples of people who don’t want what you want, or what you want them to want. And there are even more examples of people who may want the similar things to what you want, but don’t believe they can achieve them, even if they do work hard. These people aren’t lazy, either. They’re merely despondent.

Let’s take a classic example: when I think of a “lazy person,” my mind pictures a male, probably late 20s to early 30s, living in his mom’s basement. He doesn’t have a job, he isn’t looking for a job, and he doesn’t have any life goals of his own. Mom is constantly nagging him to get out and find work so he can get his own place, but he spends his days watching Netflix and playing video games and chatting with his online friends. There’s no upward momentum in his life, and no realistic hope that it’s ever going to change.

That’s a pretty stark picture, isn’t it? In fact, many of you are probably picturing a close friend or relative that resembles this scenario, or even worse, maybe you recognize some of these descriptors as being true about yourself. If so, you’re probably feeling a bit of emotional discomfort. The societal trope is that this person is a piece of shit. Whether that thought is about you or about someone you care about, it is uncomfortable to think about. And often, we might just stop thinking about the scenario altogether as a means to relieve the discomfort. However, a better solution is to realize and recognize the truth: there’s nothing wrong with you or your loved one, at least not anything fundamental that cannot be rectified with some realignment and adjustment. If you truly understand that, then you won’t feel the discomfort the next time you think of this scenario either.

That truth is that what we term “laziness” in this fashion is often more accurately described as “that person has different motivations than I do, or that I think they should.” Let’s look at this hypothetical scenario a little closer. It would be impossible for me to describe what’s going on in this young gentleman’s mind in a way that would apply universally to everyone who finds themselves in a similar situation. We are all unique individuals with our own personal history, emotional baggage, and surrounding circumstances that coalesce into a personal fingerprint of our own unique scenario, such that no one fix or explanation could possibly apply to everyone, even if they look roughly similar at first glance. However, I can take a stab at a possible explanation, and hopefully, some of these thoughts can help you see how you could look at your own scenario through a different lens.

Let’s look at Marcus (I’ve given him a name now to make it harder for us to dismiss him as a faceless mannequin of a person we don’t care about). Marcus actually used to be quite something in high school. He was kind of amazing at football. Not the quarterback, or a wide receiver or anything flashy like that, but his team knew that he was the heart of the defense, and he had the most sacks during his senior year of anyone in the division - a fact that he still glories in to this day. He loved the camaraderie of the team, the respect from his teammates, and the looks he got from the girls when he walked past in his jersey. Even though he was perfectly acceptable as a student, he didn’t necessarily put the work in, and he certainly didn’t focus on his scholastic skills, because every spare moment and ounce of energy was poured into football, where he got the most enjoyment and social reward.

Unfortunately, when he got to college, He found out that his high school was on the smallish side compared to some that his new teammates had come from. Suddenly the stakes and the competition were much higher, and he found that his natural talent wasn’t quite enough to make the grade, even with all the work he had already put in. He was riding the bench a lot, and all the glory was gone. His frustration at having his life meaning ripped away from him got the better of him, and one night he lashed out at a girl that was making an unnecessarily pointed joke at his expense -nothing violent, but he had some hot words for her that were perhaps fueled by more than the situation at hand, and probably were an inappropriate response. Unbeknownst to Marcus, however, the girl was the coach’s daughter. Long story short, a fairly understandable human error led to the end of his college football career. His skills were not enough to overcome the coach’s bias against him, and based on how competitive sports operate, he wouldn’t be given the opportunity to increase those skills on the field.

With no realistic hopes of ever making it to the NFL, and no real scholastic skills to fall back on, Marcus dropped out of college in his second year, convincing himself (somewhat understandably) that the game was stacked against him and there’s no point working for a future he would never get. He came back home with a fresh determination to set his life on a different track. His buddy Daniel had told him the local sawmill was hiring at a good pay. He’d get a job there, live at home for a bit until he could afford his own place, find a sweet girl and settle down into the American Dream. When he got home, however, it turned out that Daniel had slightly exaggerated the rate that was being offered to entry level positions. That’s fine. Marcus didn’t need to live a lavish lifestyle; he could make it work on the reduced wage. He might have to live with Mom a little longer, which….isn’t great, admittedly. No one wants to come back from the semi-independent living at college and live in their childhood home with all the same expectations and now-weird dynamics of obedience and house rules - and some bleed over from old habits when he was a child. It’s awkward. Not to mention the social stigma of being the stereotype loser. But he can withstand that. He knows who he is, and his fears of what people would think of him are probably exaggerated anyway. It’ll be fine.

The sawmill does give Marcus the job, but it doesn’t start for another month. So now Marcus has a month to kill. He buys himself a video game console and starts playing some online games, where he meets and enjoys playing with some other players online. It’s reminiscent of the camaraderie he felt on the Team, and stokes something in him that he thought he’d lost forever. The online games require teamwork and creativity and a betterment of your skills - all things that Marcus is familiar with. These evoke close feelings to his glory days in high school. That month is a refreshing rain after the desert of his college football “career,” and it feeds some very strong needs in him for acceptance and purpose, and contributing to a community that needs him again. It’s wonderful.

A month goes by, though, as it always does, and it’s time for his first day at real work. He’s excited and ready. He’s bought himself proper work shoes and clothes and has prepared his lunch. Walking into the sawmill on his first day, it goes pretty well. There’s a couple of guys there that seem like good fellas, and they show him the ropes and give him some good-natured ribbing when he makes some new-guy mistakes. This is the type of manly interaction he understands. There’s a couple bad apples, of course. There always are; no surprise there. And his boss seems like maybe he has some personal issues, but Marcus has dealt with that before. Things are looking pretty good. That night, he goes home and gets online and tells his friends about it, and they’re all supportive and congratulatory. It’s a pretty good day and things are looking hopeful.

Marcus keeps going to his job, and while it feels good at first, after a month or two, it starts to feel very repetitive. He learns the machines pretty quickly, and once you’ve learned how they work, there’s really no significant mastery to them. He just pushes the buttons in the correct order, and the equipment takes care of the rest. There’s a lot of manual work carrying things from one area to the next, and he goes home at night with that good soreness in his muscles that lets him know that he’s put in some good work. But he starts to feel the mental itch of not having anything to get good at. He finds himself leaning more and more into his gaming sessions in the evenings where he can feed that need, and putting less and less effort into his day job. He still shows up and still does what he’s supposed to, but there’s no passion or drive left in it anymore. That’s ok. As long as the paychecks keep coming in, he can still work towards his goals and he can get his real satisfaction online with his friends.

Of course, as you might expect, there aren’t a lot of women working at the sawmill where Marcus spends most of his time, and the ones that do work there…well, let’s just say that they’re not Marcus’ type. And his online group in the evenings is also almost entirely male. He doesn’t really have any convenient way to meet women. He’s tried calling a few girls from high school who had flashed him big butterfly eyes back in the day, but they’re all either out of state in their own college careers, or they’ve gotten pregnant by some other guy that they’re trying to make a go with, or just aren’t as interested in football jocks as they used to be. A couple of times, he tried going to a bar or nightclub to meet women, but they just weren’t really his scene. He didn’t really like alcohol, and these places just made him feel socially awkward, which isn’t attractive. And honestly, it just felt desperate, and he didn’t like how he made him feel as a man - out prowling for women like some kind of predator. He wanted a woman who wanted to be with him, not someone he “captured.” No, he’d meet a woman organically or not at all. Of course, although he didn’t think of it this way, “not at all” was the more likely outcome in his situation. And, to be fair, the Internet can provide a fair facsimile of the feelings of being wanted by an attractive woman. It’s no substitute for the real thing, of course, but it was enough to stave off his more intense cravings.

Then one day, there was an incident at the sawmill. One of the more junior workers got his sleeve caught in the machinery, and while one of his coworkers quickly hit the emergency stop, it could have been really, really bad. Marcus’ boss came down from his office (which he rarely did) to find what all the commotion was about, and Marcus told him, in front of everyone, that this was his fault. That this is exactly the type of situation that Marcus had been warning him about for six weeks, and the boss had chosen to ignore it. Marcus was polite and professional, but he didn’t pull any punches or try to make excuses for his boss. After all, people’s lives were at stake. In response, his boss fired Marcus on the spot and told him to get his stuff and get out.

In the weeks that followed, the maelstrom only worsened. Realizing he couldn’t legally fire Marcus for raising a safety concern, his boss fabricated some past performance reviews and said Marcus was fired for an imaginary history of company policy transgressions. Marcus even went to attorney to sue, and was told he’d need a minimum of $5000 to start the process, and because it was largely his word against his bosses, there was no guarantee that he’d win. Marcus did not have that kind of money and stormed out of the attorney’s office just furious at the injustice.

And here’s the thing: Marcus was probably in the right in this case. He was right to bring the safety concern to his boss. He was right to call him on it in the context of someone almost getting hurt. And he was polite and professional about it. He had learned his lesson with the coach’s daughter and kept his cool the entire time, but he stood up for what was right. In fact, in response to the whole situation, the exact safety measures Marcus had recommended got installed at the sawmill after he was fired. But the boss man was a small person and didn’t have the emotional wherewithal to take a public embarrassment like that and admit when he was wrong. To his mind, this was a challenge to his authority, which was a threat to his job, which was a threat to his family’s well-being. He felt the need to act sharply to make sure he stayed in charge and everyone else knew not to challenge him. So he fired Marcus, made some excuse about he was going to make those changes anyway, and put the matter out of his mind. In truth, maybe Marcus could have handled it differently. Maybe he could have approached the boss privately in his own office after things had cooled down. Sure. That might have had a different outcome. But let’s be honest. How many of us had that level of experience and wisdom to know how to handle things with that much grace when we were in our 20s? I know I certainly didn’t.

In Marcus’ mind, however, this was just a replay of the coach’s daughter. He got something important taken away from him because he spoke up about an injustice. In truth, there was an important difference between the two situations - in one he lost his temper and said some things he shouldn’t, and in one he kept his temper and said only what deserved to be said. But Marcus’ mind missed that distinction and filed them both under “I spoke up, and I lost my job.” And Marcus’ football training would never let him back down meekly from an opponent. It wasn’t like him to see someone possibly getting hurt and just let it go. That just wasn’t in his nature. So subtly, Marcus started believing that no matter where he went, no matter what he did.“his mouth” would always get him in trouble. He started to see the world in a cynical light. He started to see injustice in things that might have just been poor judgement or at worse negligence. Soon he was talking to his friends about “the system” and how it’s stacked. He even started seeing himself as a bit of an expert on such topics, advising his friends and sympathizing with similar events in their lives.

He got another job, of course. One that paid more but wasn’t as satisfying to work at. But this time he quit because, in his mind, he could see the writing on the wall when his boss wasn’t taking suggestions Marcus offered him on how to improve the company’s bottom line. And then the job after that was just a completely bad fit for him from the start. Each of these got filed in Marcus’ mind as another failure on him and proof of how he’d never be able to keep a good job because the system was rigged against him. And without a good job (so he told himself), he’d never be able to attract a woman, he couldn’t get his own place to live. In all it was a horribly depressing place to be in life.

And here is where you and I come along and peek in on Marcus’ life. We take a 5-second glance and see a lazy man who won’t get off his Mom’s couch and get a job, and who instead spends all of his time online gaming. We don’t know about everything he’s been through or how he thinks. In truth, it is incredibly unfair to call him lazy as a characteristic of his personality. When Marcus had real opportunities, on his high school team and when he first started at the sawmill, he worked as hard as anyone. He was happy to. He’d been trained to be a hard worker. But over time, his belief system got twisted into thinking that hard work in the work place was a lost endeavor. How many of us would work our tails off if we truly believed it would achieve nothing?

And remember: those video games that Marcus “wastes” his whole day on? Those are filling a deep need in Marcus that work is supposed to fill. They are specifically designed to appeal to the sense of teamwork and progression that are inherent to Marcus’ mental and emotional needs. So when Marcus wakes up in the morning, and the shame of where he is and where his life has gone crashes over him like a 6-ton wave of tepid brine, at that moment he is faced with a choice: should he spend exorbitant amounts of energy doing what society tells him to do, but which never actually nets him any positive results? Or should he get online with his friends and feed those needs that are plaguing him and making him feel awful until he feeds them and sates those innate desires?

I’m not suggesting that Marcus’ life is indeed a tragedy, or that he couldn’t make some changes to get out of this mess. Of course he could, and for each of us that have Marcuses in our lives, I hope we would do everything we can to try to help them make those changes. But at the very least, I hope you can that Marcus is not “lazy.” He’s just motivated by different things than you or I are, and if you really dove into his history, you would find a very reasonable explanation (even if it might be in error in some ways) for why his motivations are the way they are.

Now, of course, this story is fictional. And, being the author, I get to magically make all the circumstances fit exactly the point I want to make. I recognize the convenience in that fact. But I think if you examine the “lazy” people in your own life and really get to know what makes them tick, my experience says that you’ll find something at least similarly understandable in each of their lives as well. I hope you’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and try to help them overcome their own demons, as that’s what we’re all trying to do.

And when next you see your own Marcus, tell him I said ‘hey.’