There we were looking at the opportunity to be lazy, seeing it, realizing that overcoming laziness and taking action, completing things was the ultimate good, and the final goal.
We were lazy gods, milling about, shouting our action toward the skies instead of plowing it into the fields. And there was good cause: we had designed our entire societal system around the concept that leisure was the ultimate good, that having all that money could buy, including the time to enjoy it all, was what mattered in life. And this desire for all that money can buy consumed us to the point where we forgot what the goal was. The goal was not to earn obscene incomes, or to amass great wealth. The goal was to have the time. To keep the time.
We didn’t want more money, we wanted more time. We wanted to extend our lives indefinitely, but that could not and would not happen. There we all were, lined up head to toe, mind to heart, just waiting for it all to be over. Wondering what it was like, wishing it away, but in reality it would never go away, this reality, this truth, that we were all going to die.
And still we were lazy. I found myself wondering and staring off into space, thinking about the things that mattered, and the things that didn’t matter. And the more I thought and the more time I wasted, the more I believed that nothing mattered. And yet, the opposite was actually the truth: everything matters, and the moment I spend with you, and the seconds I spend in reverie, are not equal moments…each has their own experiential difference. I say that one is greater than the other, the former outranks the latter.
Time spent together is better than time spent alone.
And yet we need that alone time, that is the way we came in and alone is how we will go out.
We stretch ourselves thin as parchment against and over the obligations and necessities of living in this society. This busyness goes against all the obligations that we might have to ourselves and to others.
All of it matters and yet none of it does.
Even in the face of this reality, It is better to do anything than to do nothing.
Having wasted a life being lazy, we could say “no more!” right here, but it would not mean anything. The only thing that would make a difference would be to actually take action, to do something, to move something from one place to another, to take action to make a mark, to interact with the world around us.
Do what you will but you won’t come back alive.
Better to do the thing.
