Well, the answer may be yes. The writer’s theory is that laziness is the source of most bad personality traits.

1. Someone who came across as stupid after having failed to answer a simple geography question in a cocktail party may be a victim of lethargy preventing him from expanding his knowledge.

2. A person whom most call not so bright can actually be a bright person too laid-back to exert his mental faculties. Had he read that book four times instead of once, he might have been able to answer that smart question of yours!

3. An unkempt/poorly dressed guy is just another indolent fellow who refuses to put even the slightest effort to look good for others’ sake (yes one tries to looks good for the “world”! but that is another blog for another time).

4. An eternally anxious man is just shy to think through! Yes I said “think through” – one’s anxiety about most matters can be greatly reduced if one tries to imagine all  possible scenarios for the situation in question, think of all worst outcomes and all counteractions. No one fears the known, it is mostly the unknown that we fear. This exercise is a lot of work but as I said our hero is lazy and hence anxious.

5. A careless man is either nonchalant (how the writer loves this word) or just reluctant to weigh the results of this actions

6. The mean guy in your office may just be shying away from thinking through and realizing the long-term consequences of spoiling his relationships with people

7. A blogger who writes in bullet points is too lazy to weave the points together into a good paragraph. We all know a poor writer is a sloppy one too.

Bottom-line, everybody is lazy but the lethargy manifests in different ways. No finger pointing at the writer please!

Footnotes: Yes, the writer did a thesaurus for “lazy” !

“Mediocrity” doesn’t mean average intelligence, it means an average intelligence that resents and envies its betters.

I would like to add “average intelligence which fails to realize its unexceptional nature” to make the definition complete.  It is highly important to understand that “average intelligence” ≠ “mediocrity”.

So lets move on. It is a fairly common knowledge that most people have illusions of greatness and have the constant need to validate their misconceptions. The following quote by a French novelist aptly summarizes my  point.

“In the dark room a cloud of yellow dust flew from beneath the tool like a scatter of sparks from under the hooves of a galloping horse. The twin wheels turned and hummed. Binet was smiling, his chin down, his nostrils distended. He seemed lost in the kind of happiness which, as a rule, accompanies only those mediocre occupations that tickle the intelligence with easy difficulties, and satisfy it with a sense of achievement beyond which there is nothing left for dreams to feed on.”

The mediocre mind challenges itself with never-ending puzzles to look for proofs of grandeur.

Egotism is nature’s compensation for mediocrity.

It works hard to prove its worth, trying to engage in a futile competition with others but ignores one critical point. It tries to do well things  which have no bearing on anything remotely useful.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all!

But one wonders why is it that sometimes that a mediocre mind achieves what a genius can’t.  Well the answer is “ignorance”. A closed limited mind prone to whims and illusions, tends to take initiatives for things which a genius may miscalculate and deem “not worth doing” . So while a genius wouldn’t do a task because he missed an important parameter while making  “do-ability” calculations, a mediocre would do the same thing because he missed the entire picture all-together and is confident that it is very well within his reach. And sometimes that is all that it takes to be successful!

Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go much further than people with vastly superior talent.

Why should we feel guilty when we procrastinate?

Why should we just have to stick to “the best of both worlds” approach, why cant we get the best of every possible world in every possible universe?

Why do we have to think? Why can’t we just get intoxicated in the moment and not face the repercussions later?

Why isn’t life simple

To do, or not to do, — that is the dilemma: —
Whether its nobler for us to suffer,
The pains and blames of ol’outrageous boyfriends,
Or to spread arms and explore a sea of opportunities,
And by breaking up with them? — To forgo, to weep, —
No more; and by a weep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the innumerable natural shocks
That we are exposed to, — its’ a pain
We want devoutly to be worshipped. To enjoy, to weep; —
To weep, and finally dream: — ay, there’s the fun;
For after a small weep, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this regret and recoil,
Must take a pause: there is some prospect
That makes hope for our suburbun life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The junta is wrong, right we are is highly likely,
The pangs of maara maari, the traffic’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the lack of funds
That ‘cool’ guys, the unworthy takes,
When we ourselves are stuck with naives,
With just a love? Can their children we bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that is the dread of finding no one after them —
The undiscover’d territory, from whose bourn
No love may come, — puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know naught of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;
And we are left with regret and boredom,
With this regard, our dreams turn awry,
And lose the name of ’simply fun’.

Friend’s boyfriend decided to come to town,
Popular opinion says he is such a clown,
Wanted to surprise but surprise was only his own,
Upon telling the news, when he received the frown,
Matters cooled when a lot of spirit went down.
The poor banker then slept in the godown.

Now it is a well established fact that the writer is intellectual, nonchalant types. Therefore lately she has been spending a lot of time doing a lot of thinking about youth, life, etc etc and has concluded the following: there is no end to and consequence of thinking, thinking is a not-so-bad way to kill time but roadies is better, action is the mother of all solutions to existential angst.

Action
Now, the writer’s metabolism doesn’t result in the production of adequate amounts of energy and results in a medical condition called “lethargy”. The writer vows to fight against the condition and “act”. She intends to play, clear at least one competitive exam, visit at least one place distanced at >500 kms from Bombay and do other cool activities on weekends. Other actions include reducing talktime with friends, their “reluctance to do any work” disease is quite contagious IMO. Also, owing to the recent surge in the number of photo uploads in the writer’s facebook profile, the writer has concluded that photography is “cool” and “shall be pursued later in life”. Also, the writer has decided to cast her votes, if not on LS elections then on imdb. Enough is enough, seriously Mayawati and “big lebowski”!
Also, writer shall not involve herself in time-killing, so no more lists like “movies I have watched” and “books I have read”.

Oops, the boss has left! No more pretending to work, ha! Adios readers or just reader N, the writer shall immediately leave office now and do some important cool-feel with N.

Just a piece of poetry to end the blog -

To Pyaare,

de de re ek pappi, ban jau mei papita,

milege jab jhappi, puri hogi yeh kavita.
Note : the “pyaare” in the poem is a fictitious character and has no resemblence to any living person