Hard Work is For the Donkeys
Honoring the virtues of laziness
Let’s talk about laziness and hard work, shall we?
How do you define laziness? Is it the opposite of Hard work?
In the picture above, you see my humble abode as it sits outside what has become my World Headquarters; that’s what my friend, mentor, and entrepreneurship maven, Barbara Winter, likes to call her kitchen table.
Whenever I am in the Houston area, you will most likely find me here. Everyone here knows me, not just the employees, but most of the regular customers as well. They all know my story and my crazy adventures. They all want to know about my next trip — what, when, where.
There is always an exception to every rule. One lady who works at this restaurant doesn’t care for me and my lifestyle. She always approaches me in a passive-aggressive manner.
Last week she started her usual why you’re always here routine. I just smiled. She knows the answers. She went on, “You live in that thing. You pay no rent, no electricity, no water bill. You sit here and work all day. You pay no rent. Why?” (Mind you, she’s not even a part of the management team. She cleans tables.)
Before I could say anything, she, in a very aggressive manner, said, “You’re lazy.” I told her I was smart. “No, you’re lazy,” she said as if I was supposed to defend myself. What’s wrong with being lazy?
A millionaire once told me that if hard work were the key to riches, all the manual laborers would be wealthy, and he would be broke.
As a society, we glorify hard work and call it a necessary ingredient for success, but we never ask according to whom?
While we glorify hard work, the truth of the matter is that we want to find the easiest way to succeed. Businesses that facilitate our desire to not working hard have been thriving for a long time.
You might argue that these companies are successful because the owners/founders worked hard.
Putting in long hours in pursuit of one’s passion doesn’t equate to hard work.
The lady who was calling me lazy was angry because she was working hard to pay the bills, but I wasn’t. She had bought into the lie that you have to work hard to be a good person, and that people who don’t, people who are lazy, are not.
Where did this idea originate?
We can trace the origins of “work harder, and you’ll receive a bigger reward” to the good old days of Lords and Peasants, which then carried over to the industrial age.
Work hard to get a raise, to get a promotion, to move up the corporate ladder. The harder you work, the more you get trapped, because your hard work is non-transferable. All the while, people who benefit from your hard work are enjoying their life being lazy.
If you want to work hard, be my guest. I’ll be right here in my Mobile Domicile outside the World HQ being lazy.
As always, thank you for reading and responding.
More about me:
Rasheed Hooda is a published author and a regular contributor to ILLUMINATION, a writers’ community on Medium where writers support each other.
He is a self-proclaimed weirdo who lives a Freedom Lifestyle and writes about related topics — Travel (a top writer), Personal Growth, Freedom, and entrepreneurship. (Get the Newsletter)
“You can let others tell you what it means to be successful, or you can decide it for yourself.”
