The Lie of Lazy

I grew up in a family that believed in work. Real old-fashioned work. The kind that started early in the morning before you fully had your eyes open and somehow kept going until the sun disappeared behind the mountains. My mother was not at all interested in raising lazy children, and, truth be told, none of us would have dared test that theory for very long.

Weekends were not for lying around in pajamas watching cartoons half the day. Beds were made. Rooms were cleaned. Lawn was mowed. House was cleaned. I helped with younger kids, scrubbed bathrooms, cleaned cupboards, vacuumed floors, washed cars, pulled weeds, and helped grandparents whenever needed. If there was work to do, you did it. That was simply how life worked in my family and in a lot of the families around us.

And the interesting thing is, I don’t remember it as cruel or oppressive. We laughed a lot in my family. We played hard, too. There was food, noise, teasing, storytelling, chaos, cousins, hard-working adults, and people constantly showing up for one another. But mixed into all of that goodness was a very clear message that settled into my little-girl brain very early in life: productive people were good people.

You were praised for helping, for being responsible, for carrying your weight, for pushing through when things were hard 

And somewhere along the way, without anyone intentionally sitting me down and teaching it to me, I absorbed another message underneath it all: resting too much meant you were probably lazy.

The funny thing is, if you looked at my actual life, lazy would probably be one of the least accurate descriptions possible.

I’ve had a strong work ethic my entire life. Even as a young teacher, I was almost always one of the first cars in the parking lot and one of the last ones to leave. I spent years getting to school hours before the required time, decorating bulletin boards, planning lessons, grading papers late into the night, and trying to create classrooms where kids felt safe, inspired, challenged, and loved. And I didn’t resent it either. I genuinely loved much of what I did. I loved the feeling of creating something meaningful. I loved feeling useful. I loved contributing. And, I still do.

Which is probably why this old story still catches me off guard when it shows up.

The last couple of weeks, my energy has felt different, and I’ve felt a little less motivated to move. I’m not lying in bed staring at the ceiling, contemplating the meaninglessness of life while violins play softly in the background. It’s been much more subtle than that. More like my body tapping me on the shoulder saying, “Hey. I think we need a minute.”

Only I apparently don’t speak “a minute” very fluently.

At first, I began mentally investigating myself, as if I were both the detective and the suspect.

Was I getting sick?
Was I burned out?
Why was I feeling unmotivated?
Had I secretly become lazy sometime between 67 and 68 without noticing?

And because life has a sense of humor and he was feeling courageous, Harold gently reminded me that I am approaching 70. I’d like to report that I received that information with grace and maturity, but I did not.

Once I stopped being offended by his math, I had to admit something important to myself. My body is changing. No, I’m not using my walker just yet.  But energy does shift. Recovery shifts. Motivation shifts. 

The body starts asking for different things than it did at 35 or 45, and even at 55. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make me spiritually evolved; it just makes me stubborn.

So instead of immediately forcing myself into productivity mode, I decided to do something that sounds very simple and felt weirdly uncomfortable: I let myself rest.

I took naps.
I sat outside soaking up the sun, doing absolutely nothing productive.
I watched the trees move in the wind without simultaneously pulling weeds.

And I need you to understand how psychologically difficult this apparently was for me.

My body would be trying to rest while my brain immediately started offering productive alternatives. Clean out that drawer. Answer emails. Organize the pantry. At the very least, fold towels while resting 

It would almost be funny if it weren’t so deeply wired into so many of us.

Because I know I’m not lazy. I have decades of evidence proving otherwise. But old beliefs don’t disappear simply because they’re irrational. They settle into the body. They become automatic thought patterns, emotional reflexes, habits of identity.

And I think women especially carry this in ways we don’t always fully recognize.

Many of us were raised to connect our value to what we contributed. Not just financially, but emotionally, physically, relationally. We became the helpers, planners, caretakers, organizers, emotional support systems, schedule keepers, cleaners, workers, fixers, listeners, and adept multi-taskers. We learned how to anticipate everyone’s needs while overriding many of our own.

Research backs this up, too. Women continue to carry disproportionate emotional labor and unpaid labor, even now, and many women report feeling guilt when resting or slowing down because productivity has become tangled up with identity and self-worth.

And then aging arrives with its own wisdom, whether we’re emotionally prepared for it or not. At some point, the body stops negotiating politely and gets assertive, asking in a louder voice for rest, recovery time, and for us to pay attention to it.

And sometimes I think what’s hardest is not even the physical slowing down itself. I think what’s hardest is realizing how much of our identity was built around constantly moving, producing, helping, and proving. Because if productivity became proof that you were valuable, then rest can start feeling suspicious.

That’s the lie I continue to work on.

And it’s not because I want to sit around doing nothing all day. Quite the opposite, actually. I want enough energy left for the parts of life I actually care about now. Sitting outside with Harold. Long conversations with people I love. Writing when I feel inspired instead of obligated. Watching birds. Taking drives. Laughing hard. Having enough space in my life to notice my own life while I’m living it. 

But I’m beginning to truly get it…listening to my body is not laziness, and resting is not failure.  A slower pace is not a weakness. It just means my body wants something different from me now.” 

So here I am at 68 years old, still occasionally having internal arguments with myself about whether I’ve somehow earned the right to take a nap. Maybe that little girl in me still believes productive people are good people. Maybe she still gets nervous when we sit still too long.”

The good news is I recognize the voice now when it shows up.

The bad news is that after all these years, part of me still apparently believes I should be cleaning something.

Diana

Love is ALL there is