Laziness Does Not Exist

by Devon Price

intense, panic-fueled activism is rarely sustainable. No individual has the power to actually save the world through sheer hard work. It’s both ridiculous and destructive to set such high expectations

Set Goals Based on Compassion, Not Guilt or Fear

“There are a lot of traumatized people in activist spaces,” says Sharon Glassburn. “They’ve experienced a lot of injustice and abuse, and they don’t have the ability to walk away from it completely, and so they become really emotionally dysregulated, and they can re-traumatize the people around them.”

Grieve the Things You Cannot Change

“I think we don’t know how to grieve as a society,” ze says. “I think a lot of the conversation about activist burnout is actually about grieving, about being really able and willing to just sit in this space of This is fucking awful And there might not be anything I can do to solve this.” Xochitl shares with me that ze often mourns the harm that has already been done to the planet due to industrialization and climate change. Though society can take steps to reduce carbon emissions and slow the damage that’s occurring, there’s some harm that can never be undone.

When we treat social problems as emergencies that we must fix, we delude ourselves into thinking that we can control them, if we only work hard enough. Realistically, though, that just isn’t the case. I can fight and fight to make the world more just, but if my goal is “fixing” a decades-old problem or making it go away, I’m destined to fail and burn out. Sometimes, the best way to deal with those feelings of panic and guilt is to really let them wash over us for a moment, and really accept that we’re not fully in control—or fully responsible for it. This can be an immensely sad experience, but it can also be liberating. When we mourn the losses that cannot ever be brought back, we come to accept the reality we’re living in.

Compassion Kills the Laziness Lie

This tendency to blame people for their own pain is comforting, in a twisted way: it allows us to close up our hearts and ignore the suffering of others. This same tendency also keeps us running endlessly on the hamster wheel of hyperproductivity.

Lacking compassion for a struggling group of people actually makes it harder for us to be gentle with ourselves.

Our culture’s hatred of the “lazy” is all-encompassing. It bleeds into how we view relationships, child-rearing, body size, barriers to voting, and so much more. The Laziness Lie teaches us that people who do more are worth more. When we buy into that method of assigning value to people, we doom ourselves to a life of insecurity and judgment.

If we really want to dismantle the Laziness Lie and set ourselves free, we have to question every judgment of “laziness”

Practice Compassionate Curiosity

We often dismiss people as “lazy” when we can’t understand the reasons for their inertia or inaction.

Instead of dismissing a person so quickly, it’s much more effective to get curious. Every person has reasons for why they act the way they do.

What need are they trying to meet by acting this way? What challenges or barriers are getting in the way of their making a change? What hidden struggles (such as physical disability, mental illness, trauma, or oppression) might explain the difficulties they’re facing?

Who might have taught them to act this way? Do they have other options? Are those options really attainable for them? What kind of help might they need?

Look to the Broader Context

It’s much easier to accept a person’s actions (or inaction) when we recognize that there are outside factors that influence how they behave.

By zooming out and examining their social context, we can get better at seeing them as complex, dynamic people instead of hollow stereotypes. This helps us to stop expecting flawless behavior and productivity from them and to start seeing them as people who are worthwhile no matter how much they do or don’t produce.

Stop Associating Productivity with Goodness

radically compassionate to stop labeling behaviors as “bad” at all. The Laziness Lie is rooted in capitalism and a particularly harsh breed of Christianity, and it preaches that salvation comes from hard work. That belief system carries over into how we talk about productivity, effort, and achievement. It teaches us to view idle time as a waste and to try to constantly keep ourselves occupied. It leads us to assume that there is more virtue in doing something than there is in doing nothing, no matter what that “something” is.

rather, it’s a call for good people to band together and stand firm against the evil forces attacking them. This quote doesn’t praise activity for the sake of activity, it praises community. It suggests that not all battles for good are direct clashes of power, and that violent “contemptible struggles” often will fail. Sometimes, the best thing good people can do is hunker down, care for one another, and survive.

I’ve sometimes counteracted the (fake) Burke quote by telling people that all that’s needed for harm to persist in the world is for evil people to think they’re doing good.

Here are some indications that you may still be associating productivity with goodness: When you get less done during the day than you anticipated, you feel guilty. You have trouble enjoying your free time. You believe you have to “earn” the right to a vacation or a break. You take care of your health only in order to remain productive. Having nothing to do makes you feel “useless.” You find the idea of growing old or becoming disabled to be incredibly depressing. When you say no to someone, you feel compelled to say yes to something else to “make up” for it.

More important, I wanted them to get comfortable with being less productive than society tells them they ought to be. Taking breaks, drawing boundaries, and learning to listen to our internal feelings of “laziness” are each worthwhile for their own sake, not because they make us better workers.

His worth to me has absolutely nothing to do with his activity level or anything he “contributes” to my household or my life. His worth comes from his being beautifully, imperfectly alive. If this little animal’s life is innately valuable and beautiful no matter what he does or doesn’t do, maybe that means my life is innately valuable too. In fact, if I can love Dump Truck just as much when he’s doing nothing as when he’s doing a lot, then maybe I can care for and appreciate every human regardless of how they spend their time. It’s wonderful to realize that all people are deserving of love and comfort, and that this worthiness has nothing to do with productivity.

Over time, though, we can get better at dismissing the parts of ourselves that have been conditioned to letting go of and judging, and start observing with compassion instead.