IDLENESS

 

          IDLENESS

Idleness is used both in the negative and positive sense. Compulsory idleness like rest, repose, interval, unemployment is not bad or objectionable. For example, if a machine or factory is idle, it is not immoral. It is rather reluctant inactivity. A person who fails to get a job for no fault of his cannot be called an idler. One who is idle by his own choice is a sinner. He is inexcusable. He forgets that idleness is one of the seven deadly sins, the remaining six being ----lust, gluttony, greed, anger, jealousy and pride.    

Some synonyms of idleness are : laziness, inertia, indolence, lethargy, languor, inactivity, etc.

Idiomatically, an extremely idle person is good-for-nothing; he is a  couch potato and his mind is a devil’s workshop.

According to psychiatrists idleness is a cause of poor health, organic ailments, anxiety, depression, loss of memory, gloominess, etc.

The American author Richard E.Burton 1861----?) says:”Idleness is the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, the cushion upon which the devil chiefly reposes, and a great cause not only of melancholy, but of many other diseases; for the mind is naturally active; and if it be not occupied about some honest business, it rushes into mischief or sinks into melancholy.“

The English writer Thomas Carlyle (1705-1881 ) who struggled hard for many years to support himself by writing found perpetual despair in idleness.

Another English writer and poetess Hannah More (1745-1833)  said: “Idleness among children, as among men, is the root of all evil, and leads to no other evil more certain than ill temper.”

Finally, this short but relevant quote: Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite.

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G.R.Kanwal

1^st October 2024