‘Lazy days’ is a common phrase that you have probably encountered from your friends, colleagues at work or by yourself. I know that I have said these words so many times.”Today is my lazy day, I just feel like doing nothing’. The commonality of these words in the past few years shows the great desire for people to rest. To rest from work, kids, school, depression, anxiety, the politics and everything else that comes with the world.

Inevitably, society does not easily allow us to have lazy days: because when you do- you have your neighbor asking why you have not cleaned your gutters, your friend wants to go out partying, your school assignment is due, your husband needs his shoes washed, your children want you to cook their favorite meal among other things. In most cases when we sit around the house doing nothing we always feel some sort of guilt that we should be in the office working, or at home cooking and cleaning or just looking after our children.

I most definitely feel qualms of guilt and during these lazy days I might just squeeze in a bit of cooking or cleaning here and there to rid me of the guilt. The guilt is because we have been wired to believe that if we are not working, busy or moving around we are losing. Lazy people = poverty = no food/medicine= death. But is being lazy so wrong?

I would think that being lazy is actually part of human nature- it is innate. When we analyze the Creation Story from the Bible, God put us in the Garden of Eden to eat, drink and enjoy as we please. In essence, God did not us create us to work. He just wanted us to be there: for nature to work for us. I would assume the trees to plant themselves and bear fruits so that we would eat as we like. It is only after we sinned that God told us we should toil and work. In truth we bear this aspect of laziness in us all the way from birth to adulthood.

I know this argument may appear foolish- but have you ever wondered why when animals are born they immediately learn to walk and run? So that, they survive the wild and not become prey. However, with humans it’s not the same case. Human babies have to be nurtured for long. By the time a human baby can fend for themselves it is majorly from eighteen years- holding other socioeconomic and political factors constant. It is probably because of our innate ability to be lazy.

Look at it from the perspective, that we as humans- from birth – thrive at being taken care of, being nurtured and looked after. Hence, anything that deviates from this causes us anxiety, depression, and discord. We take lazy days so that somebody somewhere can take care of issues that we would otherwise do. In so doing, we feel relaxed, at peace and joyful and all other forms of mental and physical problems slowly disappear. I can attest that the days i truly and completely do a lazy day, i face the next days much better, rejuvenated and excited.

We should as humans – help one another to have lazy days. At work you can tell your colleague, “Have the day off I will take care of your duties today”. At home, the husband can say, “Rest my darling, I will prepare the kids and take care of the house chores today.” In the gym your trainer should indicate, “Take two days of resting your body will continue after that.” These are just but a few incidences in life there are so many other ways we can help each other have lazy days.

Notably, we cannot have lazy days all the time because we have to create a balance; whereby it should not be work with no play or play with no work. The two have to attain some sort of equilibrium. Seek to create this balance. More or less you can just sit at home, sleep, do yoga and relax without any sense of guilt because we were born to be lazy!