Sloth, paresse, pigrizia, pereza.
"We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty." - Quintilian
Overheard as I was paying for my gas, "Man them d's fired me cause I missed work. I told them my car was repo'd. And I told them a-holes I couldn't walk no ten blocks to work. Man, who they think I am."
The word sloth came to mind as I exited the gas station and I wondered when the human race had become so lazy, so slovenly. I don't know if I would have had a different thought if he didn't seem to be so young - with his pants hanging down and his jacket hood pulled up around his face (it wasn't cold).
When I was in the fifth through eighth grade I walked nearly ten blocks with my siblings and friends to school everyday. There was no bus because it was a small Lutheran school.
And, yes, there are situations where people can't get to jobs because they aren't on bus lines, etc...but when did ten blocks become such a difficult feat accompli?
I think about those who walked from Selma to Montgomery, or the Million Man March on Washington, and so many others who have had to take difficult walks in their lifetime in order for us to be successful in our lifetime.
I thought about my grandmother who woke every morning at five, in a little town outside of Mobile, Alabama, to walk more than twenty blocks to take food and a good word to families who were less fortunate than she, because she didn't drive (during the summer when we would visit I would often go with her), and she would then turn around and walk back to fix breakfast for her family and get the day started.
I thought about the children of Israel and how long they traveled around that same mountain - cause all they did was complain.
Have we created a generation of sloths - one of the seven deadly sins? Are we such 'right now' people that we won't even walk ten blocks to a job in order to feed ourselves and our families?
Today know this to be true; sloth like anything else can be taught over a lifetime. Every action or inaction can become a habit. When you won't get up to change the tv or get the remote, if you clap on and clap off the lights, the stereo, and start the car from inside the house...how discliplined has your sloth become?
No comments:
Post a Comment