Sunday, February 11, 2007

Greatest Evil

I seem to have stumbled upon the greatest vice that humans have - Laziness. Believe Pandit Sri Ram Sharma Acharya if not me; after all, he's written more than 5000 books (as per one follower). He said -"Aalasya se badhkar adhik ghaatak aur adhik sameepvarti shatru doosra nahi hai (There is no greater or closer foe than laziness)". You fail because you are lazy, not because you are incapable. Laziness not just in the form "let me sleep a little more". Laziness in all its manifestations, inertia being the prime avatar. If you think of it, so many problems of the world can be solved if peopple just come out of their stupor. Terrorism is an example of the zeal of a few winning over the inertia of so many.
There are so many things that I want to do, or wanted to do at one point. At one point, I had thought of opening a school for good primary and secondary education, and teaching there for a while. I want to understand essentials of economics, biology, the umpteen fields of materials science, learn about various fields of Physics and Mathematics, learn ice-skating, roller-skating, to speak several languages, do bunjee jumping, sky-diving, scuba diving, visit all the places in the world, and so many other things. If you think, the want-to-do list is too long, let me tell you it is not. Life is long enough to be able to do everything under the sun. But, I haven't done even a small fraction of that. My daily input towards any productive work is a recipe for disaster. When at the end of several weeks, I look back to figure out the reasons, its always that single devil - laziness, inertia, and the likes. There have been times when I have caught myself being lazy in most unforgivable circumstances, like finalizing a journal paper. I catch myself avoiding searching a paper to verify facts, or proving some formula, and then thankfully I wake up.
Consider this: What do you do if you think you have a problem, a vice? You work hard at getting it out of your system. But what if the vice is that you can not work hard enough? That's why laziness is an extremely dangerous enemy. You can't beat it. In fact, the very existence of this evil makes me sort of fatalist. Is there really a free will? Are you sure?

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