Once upon a time there was a poor old woman whose husband had died. She had a son, Lazy Tom, who might have been a help but the boy was so lazy he simply added to her burdens. Lazy Tom would not lift a finger to help himself or anyone else. One day his mother begged him to go down to the river and fetch some water. ‘I would gladly go, but I am far too lazy,’ he replied. Only when she began to leap up and down and go a dark shade of purple did he agree to help her, slouching down to the river in self-pity and dejection.
On his reluctant journey a small fish, gathered up with the water, spoke to Lazy Tom. ‘Oh let me go kind sir and I will reward you”, but the boy felt far too lazy and only once the fish had entreated him and splashed a good amount of water from the pail did he agree. ‘If ever you need help,’ called Fish, ‘just call for me saying, ‘Little Fish, Little Fish, come grant my wish.”
When Lazy Tom arrived home he found that there was nothing to eat. He remembering what the fish had said so he called out as he had been instructed and immediately there appeared a table groaning with food. They ate so much he fell into a deep sleep in the meadow woken much later by the passing by of the King’s daughter who was so beautiful he called again on Fish to cause her to be with child and wonder of wonders she bore a son before the year was out.
The King was none too pleased, demanding to know who the father might be. He called together the wise sages of the kingdom, who advised him to collect all the local men and see to whom the child might give a rosy apple, for he would surely be the child’s father. And so Lazy Tom was found out even though he was last in line. The King put him and the Princess and their child in a barrel and tossed them all into the river but of course the Little Fish was ready to hand and rescued them, not to mention rustling up a fine castle with all the trimmings.
The story poses a number of questions. What ails Tom? What light does the story shed on the nature of ‘laziness’. How is Tom’s affliction resolved?
The word “sloth” is a translation of the Latin term acedia which means “without care”. Spiritually, acedia first referred to monks who had become indifferent to their duties and obligations to God. Mentally, acedia is a lack of any feeling about self or others.
On closer inspection acedia is much more than a sin of omission. It seems to contain a subtle animosity towards the Gods, a dissatisfaction with one’s lot, the entitlement that goes with having been dealt a disappointing hand which can then become so easily a kind of bitter withholding and a refusal to play.
The original ‘acedia‘ could be translated as ‘angry indifference towards god (or the gods)’, a loss of connection to higher power leading to inflation and disconnection form self and world. The synonym ‘dejection’ is rooted in the latin deicere, thrown down (by god), ‘downcast’, with corresponding feelings of isolation and loss of relatedness.
Lazy Tom is experiencing the enervation of a rather particular kind of spiritual condition, one where ego and Self are furthest from each other. You can see Tom’s ‘laziness’ writ large in the concepts of sociologists Durkheim and Weber collective phenomenon of anomie and alienation, social conditions concomitant with a phase of history characterised by over-civilisation and a mono-theism of consciousness.
Mostly we tend to fall into the camps of either being either dismissive and reductive about the gods on the one hand or God fearing and devout on the other. You get to be zealous either way. But there is a murky, hesitant kind of in-between stage where you secretly suspect that the gods might be real but really wish they weren’t. Privately, you feel really pissed off at having to deal with them and all life’s aggravation which is failing to turn out as planned. ‘Laziness’ is never lazy on its own. An intrusive and dejecting Other is always implied, to whom one is reluctant, by whom you feel displaced, to whom you would then peevishly refuse co-operation.
If ‘laziness’ can be viewed as one end of an interpersonal dynamic it becomes remarkably reminiscent of analyst John Bowlby’s observations about ‘insecure attachment’ in the behaviour of abandoned infants. He identified three stages of separation response in these infants, firstly protest, then when that doesn’t work, despair, and finally ‘detachment’, all the clinical manifestations of which seem to be Lazy Tom personified. He is disconnected from the world around him, unmotivated and unresponsive. Given the ubiquity of this experience throughout our times it makes me wonder if it is not a collective expression of the final stages of separation from the Great Mother as detailed by Bowlby and the attachment theorists. The curse of over-civilisation with its disavowal of the Gods is listlessness, boredom, entitlement and enervation.
Apathy is not simply a state of being. It is relational. It’s about what exists between me and not-me. The etymology of ‘apathy’ is from the Greek meaning ‘freedom from want’ (a- without, pathos -suffering) which detaches you from the bonds of obligation and reciprocity with your neighbours, eroding fellow feeling. Behind the moral judgements on the lazy child is a story of isolation and loss. Lazy Tom has lost his father and through her despair perhaps Mother’s loving presence as well. He’s angry but his detachment makes it impossible to express other than by the resentful armoured passivity of refusing to join the world.
‘Behind the mask of indifference is bottomless misery and behind apparent callousness, despair.’ Bowlby 1946
The Little Fish in our story seems to know this about Lazy Tom and so it doesn’t give up on him. You can’t help but assume Little Fish is the representation of divinity or higher power, one which didn’t get itself into the pail by accident. Tom’s small gesture of relatedness is enough to catch the God’s attention and restore a living and fruitful connection, the child born to Tom and the Princess, new life out of the stagnation of ennui. Of course the old dispensation, the dominant structure in the personality, the King, is not going to like all this new-fangled energetic aliveness and will try to destroy it but Tom’s new relationship with Little Fish means the threat of annihilation is transformed into one of freedom and abundance.
