Laziness: Subtle Fiend of Addiction and Vice

I’m not very good at introductions. I beg of you to bear with me and read on long enough to catch my meaning. What I’m writing here is important to me, because it reflects an internal struggle I face. I hate laziness (though not enough apparently to slap him in the face).

Laziness, by virtue of the fact that it hinders your ability to accomplish anything of value, creates a problem that encourages you to continue to be lazy. Laziness is self perpetuating and feeds on you much like an addiction. Laziness robs you of the joy and satisfaction you normally need to sustain yourself through times of want and desire. It robs you of your ability to be content, because it creates a state of desolation in your soul.

Here is the cycle. You submit to temptation to put off work, to instead pursue a transient pleasure (sleep, leisure, etc..). Later, you reflect upon your life and realize that you have nothing substantial to show for it. This realization causes depression. The depression drives you to seek entertainment or some pleasure to compensate. Often this drive for compensation happens at the cost of fulfilling responsibilities (laziness), and the cycle repeats.

When laziness is combined with addiction, at the point where a person is tempted to use his or her addiction, the thought intrudes upon the mind that to do without the stimulation is too hard because there is nothing else. This is the great lie, that the stimulation (as bad as it is) is better than nothing at all. Laziness feeds the lie that there is nothing at all by robbing you of physical proof that there is something else worth foregoing the stimulation for.

This is why some people never break free, even though they are aware of the lie and of all the consequences, and know all the strategies for combating addiction. It is because, when it comes down to the moment where they are faced with the decision to abstain to indulge, they have nothing that means anything to them worth saving, and they never will, because they are too lazy build it.