Pikuach Nofesh

Silo the Cat and His Big Lazy Yawn

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” (Plato, 427 BC - 347 BC)

I endure a decent amount of criticism for preaching the ‘Gospel of Laziness’ and extolling its many virtues, yet I am by no means a sedentary person. I work an incredibly active and physical 50–60 hour work week, lift weights, practice yoga, write, and bicycle over 120 miles per week back and forth from work. How can anyone so active advocate inactivity? Why do I talk one way and do another? Why am I such a hypocrite?

As Shakespeare would say “Me thinks he doth protest too much.”

It pretty much boils down to my upbringing. I was not raised with many of the conventional luxuries that other children have today. My childhood was literally consumed by three monumental and overbearing tasks: Limud HaTorah, Tefilo B’Kavana ub’Zmano, and shverre arbet. There was nothing else. My socialization was patterned much after my own father’s childhood, coming from the Byelorussian shtetl, where hard work, worry, and religion ruled the psyche. My life was a never-ending and very busy cycle of doing and doing more, with the few breaks from this marathon coming only when I could escape the watchfulness of Tatte or Rebbe, sometimes by seeking refuge in fresh kichelach from Bubbe’s kitchen, or reading by flashlight at the top of the stairs after everyone else was fast asleep. Sometimes I would lay awake in bed and imagine things being different than they were, and wake up the next morning to the disappointment of the same monotonous routine.

It did not help matters any that my father o’h was the most taciturn of men. He had few words for anyone and even fewer for his one and only son. I don’t ever remember him asking me how I was feeling, or if I needed help. He must have assumed that if I didn’t make any requests there was nothing amiss. I learned never to ask for help because I assumed that since none was ever offered that there was none to be had. The positive side is that my father wasn’t rigidly overbearing or a control freak in an overt or aggressive manner. Though he was careful of my outward behavior and wary of my predilection for reading fremde zachen, once I adapted to his passive-aggressive parenting style, it became easy to work around it. As long as I gave him no outward reason for suspicion, he made no efforts to subdue my wanderings. This afforded me the only luxury I ever knew, autonomy.

There are other and less psychologically prominent events that were missing from my childhood. As I don’t remember spending much time having fun, I also remember the general attitude as to what purpose, if any, fun would serve. Play was at best tolerated, and though I was able to swim, boat, and run wild for a few minutes each day during summer camp, overall the attitude was that playtime was merely an outlet for shpilkes, and not anything important in and of itself. Playtime was for babies, girls, or shotim, and an Ohev Hashem should have no distractions from limud and tefila. Nothing is worse than Bitul Zman, they say. I remember the other bochurim looking forward to Nitul Nacht so that they could openly play chess all night, but even that I couldn’t enjoy, though most probably it was because my game wasn’t all that remarkable. I’m not sure that even now I know how to unleash myself into fun, and it still seems that I have to be busy with something or be creative even when relaxing. That is why gardening, exercise, and writing have become luxurious necessities for me. They look like work, but I call it ‘fun’, since to me, fun without purpose is still wasting time.

People wonder why I daydream about doing nothing and being lazy, and now they should know why. My whole life has been work and more work with sense of purpose, with brief respites at various points along the way. My friends seldom call me for parties and gatherings. Yet, when they need something fixed or something moved, they know that Shlomo the Dependable is the fellow who gets the job done, and wastes no time in doing it. The world believes that I am so serious that I cannot enjoy anything, and now I see that they are, in part, quite correct. My idea of relaxation and fun is not anything like theirs, and as I witness the easy merriment of their good times, I am a little bit hurt that I cannot share their joy as much as I think I should. I suspect they have known me better than I have known myself for some time now.

People who interact with me on a daily basis may see me as grouchy and somewhat moody, but that isn’t really the case. Things are the same now as when I was younger, where I adapted by keeping my emotions to myself and remaining as low-key about my pleasures or pains as possible to avoid scrutiny. Perhaps that is why I took on purposeful, difficult, and quieter endeavors, since others wouldn’t dare follow me to see what I’m up to. My persona reveals nothing of the pain or the joy that I might be capable of. It just is as it is. I am one who keeps things bottled up and copes with my emotions in a Stoic and rational way. Wearing my heart on my sleeve is not what I envision for myself, and were it not for writing, I would have no means of expressing the passion that lurks behind these sad and determined eyes.

The psychological benefits of play cannot be understated. I have seen my cats transform from lonely and secretive creatures into loving and gregarious beasts through my attention and constant playfulness with them. I have seen the faces of children in 3^rd World, whose sufferings preclude any mirth they might have hidden beneath their scowls and bitter frowns. I have also seen and heard the joy of children in screeching reverie, running headlong into swimming pools and flowered meadows, having no thought or background emotion to slacken their impish enthusiasms. No double-blind studies or statistical analyses are needed to prove to me the efficacy of idle and meaningless playtime, though hundreds are readily available. I only wish I could do more than observe it from afar.

My father o’h may be dead, but the effect of being his son is alive and well. I do not miss him at all, and I am even sometimes angry with him. I realize, however, that he was blindly passing on to me that dysfunction which was passed onto him by others, and I do have some mitgefil and rachmones for him. I do miss what might have been, had Time allowed the opportunity to leave nothing unsaid between us. In retrospect, it is disquieting to know that my father and I were always strangers. Yet, I would not trade knowing him better in an imaginary future for the self-awareness that I gained through our divergent pasts. I only wish that he would have had more fun in his life. He must have been so tired. How sad it is that people cannot enjoy the simplest and easiest of pleasures! I realize now that even my ‘fun’ is becoming work, too, and I am not so much different from the man I have sought not to be.

It is not for nothing that I dream of doing nothing.

“Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.” (Soren Kierkegaard, 1813 - 1855)

“Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything.” (Floyd Dell)