Bring your laziness along for the ride. (#96)
The practice of writing is a habit. I haven’t been practicing that habit, even though I know that practice moves me towards my goals. So I’m rebuilding, again, with 100 pieces of writing that will prime the pump, so to speak. That’s good, and it’s also discouraging because beginning again comes with shame about my own laziness. That shame threatens to paralyze me into losing heart and giving up, thereby reinforcing that shame.
How can I carry my laziness with me without the shame that discourages me? Is it even possible to separate the two?
As usual, Pema Chödrön encourages those of us in this situation to start where we are, and become curious and present with what’s happening here. Her teaching includes teasing apart three different kinds of laziness, and in doing this shows why one should get to know our laziness profoundly, rather than feeling discouraged by it.
"This very moment of laziness becomes our personal teacher."
First, there’s the laziness of comfort orientation, we just try to stay comfortable and cozy. Then there’s the laziness of loss of heart, a kind of deep discouragement, a feeling of giving up on ourselves, of hopelessness. There’s also the laziness of couldn’t care less. That’s when we harden into resignation and bitterness and just close down.
The laziness of loss of heart, the one that travels with discouraging shame is what pre-Reformation Christian theologians came to refer to as Acedia or spiritual aridity, that next-level laziness that tempts you to abandon hope, and with it the discipline of daily habit.
(Warning: geeky theological side-note ahead.)
When the West moved from a primarily agricultural to a mixed commercial/agricultural culture, and the Reformation changed Western ideas about the value of our labor, acedia came to be associated more with the first kind of laziness, of comfort orientation where we don’t feel like doing our studies, our jobs, or sweeping the floor. Acedia, the laziness associated with the loss of heart and a feeling of giving up on ourselves, became mixed up with the laziness of comfort orientation in what became the Deadly Sin of Sloth: a compound sin of pride that tempts you to abandon hope through shame, and with it the discipline of daily habit.
Busy-ness became the Western form of comfort orientation as a way to reject the shame and hopelessness and *prove* we were not succumbing to this particular sin. So, we get busy. We set Pomodoro timers and don’t take vacations as a way (so we think) of staving off hopelessness, trying frantically to divide, suppress or control that part of ourselves.
To bring our laziness with us on our life journey without the paralyzing shame, we must take heart rather than losing it. Rather than dividing ourselves and trying to throw away parts we do not like, Chodron writes, we must *have* our laziness and learn about it, listen to it tenderly like a beloved child, listen to what it has to teach us about how to bring it along on the next step of making that next one thing better. "We touch in and then we go forward. This is the training.”
