A reassuring article by Tom Hodgkinson:
A delicious feeling of smugness enveloped the idle at heart when we read that Britain’s oldest man, 110-year-old Reg Dean from Derbyshire, attributed his longevity to “being lazy”. Now I’m no biologist, but it seems to make a lot of sense that slow lives, as well as being enjoyable, are long lives. One only has to think of the example of the tortoise for proof of this theory from the animal world.
….Laziness works. And the simple way to incorporate its health benefits into your life is simply to take a nap. A study of 23,681 Greek adults in 2007 found that those who took a siesta lived longer. Systematic nappers had a 37% lower chance of suffering from coronary mortality. I imagine though that this life-affirming Greek custom is under attack from the supposedly “hard-working” Germans, who, one gets the impression, have been encouraging the Greeks to toil harder in return for loans following the recent financial collapse.
The reason laziness is rarely pushed as a lifestyle option is down to one simple reason: money. There are fortunes to be made out of active lifestyles. Gyms charge fees. But no one is going to make money out of sleep. It is free. Who would pay for a billboard campaign that declares “Tired? Take A nap”?
….Pottering in the garden and intellectual inquiry are time-honoured forms of respectable laziness. After all, it was Aristotle who believed that the vita contemplativa, the life filled with enough time for pondering the essentials, was more likely to lead to fulfilment than the life of the busy merchant or the honour-seeking politician. And wise Epicurus counselled a retreat from city life and the cultivation of gardens as a route to finding what he called “undisturbedness”.