IDLENESS IS A CURSE
There is a famous proverb : An idle
man’s brain is a devil’s workshop. It
means that “ a mind without productive work or purpose easily fills with
negative, mischievous, or evil thoughts and ideas, becoming a breeding ground
for trouble, much like the workshop where the devil can create havoc.”
No organ of the body can maintain
its healthiness without performing the task which is eternally destined for it. The secret of life is continuous
activity. Relaxation is reward of fulsome activity.
A dictum says: No pain, no gain. Get
your wages after doing your allotted labour most efficiently. Also remember the
idiom : the effort is expended in labour, and the value is created thereby.
Idleness being laziness, indolence,
sloth, inertia, and slothfulness blunts human faculties which shine in use. So
be up and doing. This phrase means that we should not sit idle or waste our
time. Instead, we should always be active and busy doing something useful. This
approach will keep us healthy, wealthy and wise. Idle people are invaded by illness,
unhealthy thoughts, dreadful dreams and destructive pictures of time.
The English divine Richard Baxter (1615-91)
wrote somewhere: Idleness is the hotbed of temptation, cradle of disease, the
waster of time, the canker-worm of
felicity. To him that has no employment, life in a little while will have no
novelty ; and when novelty is laid in the grave, the funeral of comfort will
soon follow. Idleness is a constant sin,
and labour is a duty. Idleness is the devil’s home for temptation and for
unprofitable , distracting musings; while labour profiteth others and
ourselves.
According to the English poet and
writer Geoffery Chaucer (1340-1400) idleness
is the gate of all harms. An idle man is like a house that hath no walls; the
devils may enter on every side.
And finally this piece of advice by the
English poet Christopher Smart (1722-71): Go to the ant, thou sluggard, learn
to live, and live and by her busy ways, reform thine own.
*****
G.R.Kanwal
!4 December 2o25
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