Indolence

Indolence is a beautiful word; it flows musically off the tongue. Of course it's not a very desirable trait--it's really a synonym for laziness, a word that carries a more negative connotation. Another synonym is sloth, which is one of the seven deadly sins.

But indolence is a word that suggests a different kind of inactivity than laziness does. The painting above, titled "Indolence," by Guillaume Seignac, is a typical image that comes up when I do a search of images for indolence. It suggests a kind of peaceful state of being, the one where you have nothing that needs to be done and this gives a person a great deal of pleasure. There's certainly a sexual connotation as well--if this woman were going to break a sweat, it would only be having a nice roll in the hay.

I bring this topic up because indolence is a key part of my personality. It forms a great deal of who I am. I look at hugely successful people, those go-getters who never rest until they get what they want, as some kind of aliens. I am not one of them. I have always been a person who preferred to do as little as possible. Though I wouldn't characterize myself as a failure, I am certainly not as successful as I could have been. And I blame indolence.

But I also sort of embrace my indolence. It has an intellectual cache, after all. John Keats wrote on "Ode on Indolence," and it was a theme among most of the romantic poets. The scholar Willard Spiegelman's book on them is called Majestic Indolence. It's a kind of intellectual snobbery, to be sure, as these guys who didn't have to work could afford to spend their days in languor in the meadow, while most people worked their fingers to the bone to provide for their families, but if we had the choice, wouldn't we rather be in the meadow, writing poetry?

My father had his seventieth birthday a few days ago and when I spoke to him we got a little philosophical. He still works, mostly I think because he needs to financially, but he put a positive spin on it, saying that it is probably going to make him live longer. He said if he wasn't working he'd just sit in his chair eating and watching TV. And he's right, studies show that when you have something to live for, like a job, it adds years to your life.

But oh, I would love to not have to work. I buy lottery tickets when the jackpot gets big and fantasize about how I would quit working forever. I could find many ways to keep my mind occupied, without having to deal with the politics and bullshit of a job. I don't know where the seed was planted in my head, but I've never reconciled myself to the fundamental need to work. It's not like I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, but somewhere along the line I've come to feel like a rich person trapped in the body of a middle-class one. I just keep daydreaming about the day when my true self will emerge, with enough money to allow me to do anything I want, which may be absolutely nothing.