Are You Lazy?

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Like many of us, I come from a hardworking, blue collar background.  My parents and extended family pretty much busted their asses in postwar America to provide their children with the American Dream…and it paid off.

After the second World War my Dad settled into construction work, eventually going into business for himself building homes and remodeling.  Mom kept the books and ran the household – no easy task with five kids underfoot (she actually got into the playpen herself once, just to get away from us, LOL.).  They both came of age in the early twentieth century, when just keeping food on the table and a roof over your head took up most of one’s time.

In our family, anything that needed to be made, built or repaired was a do-it-yourself project.  I can’t remember a single repairman ever coming to our place.  The only people Dad ever hired were specialists like bricklayers and plumbers to speed things up when he built a house for a customer.  Otherwise we either took care of it, or it stayed broken.

Part and parcel of this environment of hard work, self-sacrifice, and independence was that everyone was expected to pitch in from an early age.  No work, no allowance.  But we always got a small allowance…because not working was not an option.  Many’s the Mighty Mouse cartoon I missed on a Saturday morning because I was (under extreme protest) out working with Dad..and we’re not talking easy stuff.  It could have been anything from pulling nails from concrete form lumber, to cleaning up a work site, to (later on) mixing concrete by hand or helping to hoist heavy bundles of shingles up to a roof.

This was all necessary, but it didn’t make it any more pleasant.  After all, the kids we saw on TV generally didn’t do a lick of work.  Like, The Beaver was always busy learning life lessons from his white-collar Dad who wore a sport shirt on a Saturday to build a birdhouse in his garage…and Dennis the Menace might have had a paper route, but as far as we could tell he never had to move a few hundred bricks from one side of a house to the other after school.

So, we did often work under protest.  And we heard about it, trust me.  I’m not sure if the word “lazy” was ever actually used, but the implication was always that you were pretty much worthless unless you worked hard – always.

As I moved out into the world on my own, as it turns out this was pretty good training.  I’d tested high in my class as to “IQ”, but the restrictive educational process back then (and probably not much has changed) just didn’t suit me.  Nothing changed when I entered college, so I dropped out.  And without a degree, like most of my peers the only way I found to make a living was through manual labor.

I was able to stomach the hard physical work only because I was familiar with it – and I never even considered clerking or some such because mind-numbing indoor work seemed even worse.  But still, I despised having to work hard and as a result resented anyone who had the misfortune to be my boss (on the other hand, I can assure my younger readers that in those days, a boss was likely to be a WWII veteran and not inclined to the warm-fuzzy human resources seminar grad often found in supervisory positions today.)

It wasn’t until later in life that I realized where my distaste for hard work had come from – I’d been forced to do it as a child, and not always in the kindest way possible.  And not only distaste for work had been instilled in me.  That very distaste almost automatically lead to feelings of guilt, for to not work was to not earn one’s keep.

So, the tension in me was set up…I hated to work; but to not work was unacceptable.  Amazingly, this pattern extended even to things I liked to do.  Even writing, for which I’ve always had an inclination and a certain degree of natural talent, produced negative feelings.  When  I was writing, it felt like work and so I disliked it (even though the end product was often something of which to be proud); when I wasn’t writing, I felt guilty because I was being lazy and wasting my talent.  This constant back-and-forth from one negativity to the other was uncomfortable and unproductive, to say the least.  I often heard my father’s voice in the background of my mental life, urging me to “get moving”.  And he didn’t sound happy.

It took me until well into middle age to work my way out of this mental/emotional quandary.  I came to realize that there was a time to work, and a time to not – it was OK to do nothing, or to play my guitar or have a beer with a friend and not feel as though I was missing an opportunity to get some work done.  Likewise, when I worked I trained myself to view it as being optional.  No one was (or is) forcing me to do anything, and I can stop doing whatever I’m doing any time I choose.  I did not feel trapped, even when I was working for someone else.  Oh, I might “need” the job to get money, but the door swung both ways – I could walk out and find another job any time I pleased (and did, several times).

That is how I was able to stop feeling lazy – by realizing my own power to do anything I want – whenever, wherever, and however I want.  With no one forcing me to work (even in my imagination), I was able to cast off the slaveery of my own mind, instilled those many years ago by well-intentioned conditioning.

Now that I work “for myself” counseling people and helping them to heal, I love my work.  It’s not an easy job – doing the actual readings can be tedious at times, and some of my clients have challenging problems and questions that stretch my skills to the limit and sometimes tire me.  But since realizing that I’m in complete control (especially as an independent “solopreneur”), it’s a labor of love.  I also must admit that my secret weapon has been performing clearing work for myself.  As I’ve reached the stage of studying the Level III module of Soul Realignment I’ve been able to root out all the little, niggling bits of my belief system implanted half a century ago that have been preventing me from fully embracing my work and indeed my life itself.

If you consider yourself to be “lazy” at times, take it easy on yourself.  There’s a time to work, and a time to play.  And if you can’t love the work you need to do in order to live: change it!  Better to have to lower your living standards for a time than to surrender to soul-crushing mental or physical labor for the rest of your life.  Take your time and do it in a logical manner, but do it – procrastination  is even worse than perceived laziness.  But that’s another blog post entirely. 🙂 .

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