You’ll note there was no Sunday Reflection last week. I’ve been very busy and I was really tired, so I had a quiet, restful Sunday, and I’ll choose to reflect on that again today – Sundays are for being lazy.

Laziness has a bad reputation these days. Society tells us we should always be doing something, whether that’s working, consuming, doing leisure activities, whatever. Just sitting around is frowned upon. Be productive! Justify your existence! Don’t just sit there! You’re a drain on the system! If you’re not working, you should be consuming an expensive leisure product! Prop up the economy! It’s your patriotic duty!

Arrrgh, I hate all of that. I’ve rediscovered the joys of doing very little recently, whether that’s reading, enjoying the sights and sounds around me, napping, staring into space, whatever. People seem to have a fear of doing nothing. Boredom is seen as the worst possible thing in the world, and that’s why we’re sold so much crap to keep us busy, like smartphones and Netflix and Spotify. People don’t seem to know what to do if they’re not bombarded with demands on their time and attention. It’s a shame, really. We need to reacquaint ourselves with quiet, relaxing, lazy, peaceful nothingness. Just chilling out, and doing very little.

Sadly, we’re often too busy working, and I find it profoundly depressing that our political overlords constantly want us to be working harder, despite the fact that our Prime Minister is possibly the laziest sack of dishonest incompetence ever to fill the role. Right-wingers love fetishising hard work, but it’s usually someone else’s hard work that they happen to be profiting off. Hard work is for the little people. Hard work is a tool that right-wingers use to keep people down. Fear of destitution forces people to do crappy jobs for minimum wage, because the alternative is sleeping in a box under a bridge. That’s where laziness leads! Or so we’re told.

I’ve not had the easiest time workwise since COVID came along and crapped all over everything, but I’ve been OK. I currently juggle a few different jobs, most of which aren’t great, but they’re not full-time so they’re quite bearable, and together they add up to enough money, and enough spare time to be lazy in. I don’t have to work particularly hard, which is nice. I also don’t have to think to hard while I’m at work, which is even nicer. It’s not for everyone, but I’m not particularly ambitious these days, and I’ll settle for having enough to pay the bills with. Despite the government’s efforts to make everything as unaffordable as possible, I’m managing pretty well, and life isn’t too shabby these days. Every now and again I can afford a bit of complete downtime, where I can switch off and let my mind wander into a blissful place where not much goes on in it. It’s hard sometimes, because I have a tendency to overthink everything, but a lazy day here and there (especially if it’s a Sunday) is just what we all need. Don’t give in to the pressure to be active and busy all the time! Be as lazy as you like. The sky won’t fall in, the world will keep turning, and everything will probably be alright.