It's likely that, these days, laziness consists not in doing nothing, since we are incapable of that, but in cutting time as often as possible, in diversifying it. That's what I do in my own little way when I introduce diversions into my work. I cut time. It's a way of surrendering to laziness. And yet, I aspire to another kind of indolence.
A Zen poem, which always dazzles me with its simplicity, is perhaps the poetic definition of the kind of idleness I dream of:
Assis paisiblement sans rien faire
le printemps vient
et l'herbe croit d'elle-meme
Sitting peacefully, doing nothing
springtime comes
and the grass grows by itself
The poem, as it is translated in French, presents an admirable anacoluthon, a rupture in its construction. The one who sits is not the subject of the phrase. It isn't springtime who is sitting. This rupture of construction, whether intentional or no, indicates that, in laziness' circumstance, the subject is almost dispossessed of his consistency as subject. He is decentered, he can't even say, "I". This would be true laziness. To manage, at certain moments, to no longer have to say "I".
Wouldn't the amorous subject be searching for this kind of laziness the most?
The laziness sought after by the amorous subject is not only to "do nothing," but to "decide nothing."
In one Fragment [of A Lover's Discourse] entitled, "What to do?" I wrote that the amorous subject, at certain times, tries to carve out for himself, in the perpetual tension that passion represents for him, "a little corner of laziness."
In fact, the lover that I was trying to describe is faced with questions of conduct at every turn: should I telephone? Should I go to the rendezvous? Should I not go?
I recalled that the "What to do?", that is to say, the fabric of deliberations and decisions of which, perhaps, our life is made, resembles Buddhist karma, the chains of causes that incessantly compel us to act, to respond. The opposite of karma is nirvana. We may, while suffering from karma, postulate, fantasize a sort of nirvana. Laziness then takes on a dimension of annihilation.
True laziness would be at its core a laziness of "not-deciding," of "being-there." Like dunces at the bottom of the class, who have no other attribute than being there.
They don't participate, they aren't excluded, they're just there, full stop.
One wants that sometimes: to be there, to decide nothing. There is, I think, a Taoist teaching on laziness, in the sense of "not moving," not determining.
We could also go back to certain temptations in Tolstoy's morality, insofar as we could ask ourselves if we have the right to be lazy in the face of evil. Tolstoy responded, Yes, this is in fact is the best answer, since we mustn't respond to one evil with another.
It's unnecessary to tell you that this morality has now been totally discredited. If we were to take it even further, laziness could be seen as a high philosophical solution to evil. To not respond. But once again, our current society doesn't handle neutral attitudes very well. Laziness is intolerable, as if it were fundamentally the principal evil.
What's terrible about laziness is that it is perhaps the most banal, stereotyped thing, the least considered thing in the world, when it could be the most considered thing. It could be an ease, but also a conquest.
from "Dare to be Lazy,"
interview with Monde Dimanche,
16 september 1979
