For as long as I can remember I have avoided doing certain things. Things that have involved a certain level of effort or engagement. I avoided ordering at restaurants, getting up to sharpen my pencil at school, asking for seconds at the dinner table, and practicing new skills. I was called lazy a lot.
Now that I’ve been working on becoming more aware of my fears and overcoming them, I think that much of the time that I was perceived as lazy, I was actually just scared. Kind of like how shy people sometimes come off as cold or aloof to people who don’t know them.
Here’s the story
I remember back in school, when I was about 12 years old, I took a gym class. Now, I’ve never been what you would call athletic, although my one physical talent was flexibility. When it came to gym class, I was used to barely passing, and getting surprisingly good marks in the flexibility tests (that is, surprising to my teachers).
But in this class, it was time for a running test. (I am not a runner, and never have been—although I’ve been working on it sporadically as of late, hoping to slightly improve.) We were to run a certain amount of laps around this one trail (I think it was like two or three), and once we were done, we could spend the rest of the class resting and hanging out with friends. I thought my teacher said something about what you should do if you couldn’t finish, but I didn’t understand what she was saying.
And I didn’t ask her to repeat or reword. I was too embarrassed (of course). I decided to give this test my all, because I knew that would be the only way I would manage to finish in time for the class to be done at all. And I did, I gave it everything I had. I huffed and puffed and wheezed, my face was completely red the whole time. I did my personal best, I didn’t let my friends run with me because I knew that would mean that they weren’t doing their best.
I didn’t finish. I was one lap short. When I got back to the finish line, the whole class was waiting for me, staring at me in frustration. I had held them up and made my whole class late to wherever they were going next. Everyone was so annoyed with me, and as we were walking back into the school, one of the kids called me a “lazy ass” as he brushed by me.
The problem
I was humiliated. I had tried my absolute best, didn’t even finish (which nobody knew until this day actually), and yet still made everybody angry at me for being late and making them wait in the cold. But in this story it’s obvious I wasn’t being lazy. What actually happened was I was too embarrassed to ask for clarification, “what happens if I can’t finish? What do I do?” Because I know I’m not the only one in that group who couldn’t finish.
In this situation, I was scared of what people might think of me if I drew attention to myself in that way. Like they would think, “oh look how awful she is, she’s already planning to fail” or something like that. I was really afraid of other people’s judgements, so much to the point that I didn’t consider the reality of my lack of physical fitness nearly as much as I should have. Or maybe I did, but I definitely didn’t put that knowledge to use.
I was so afraid of people’s opinions and looking bad that I made people judge me and get mad. The fact is, if I had just sucked it up and asked my question, I probably wouldn’t have upset nearly as many people. And yes, maybe a few would have laughed at me, but I’m sure that they all would have appreciated not being late to their next class on my account.
Present day
I realize that I’m still doing this to this day—I haven’t learned my lesson. I’m embarrassed to ask questions of people that might make me look stupid or inferior or might be annoying. (And the threshold for this concern is extremely low.) I get embarrassed asking for things I want or need, worrying it might inconvenience someone or make them laugh at me. And I’m not entirely sure where this worry came from in the first place.
But you know, it’s something to be eradicated. If I put on a show of trying new things being too much work to cover up the fact that I’m actually scared of being bad at it, then I’m not going to be able to enjoy nearly as much of my life. And people won’t be able to connect with the real me. They’ll think I’m cold, or boring, or just generally hard to bond with, and while none of those things are horrible traits in and of themselves, they’re not me.
And if I continually deny my needs for fear that I’ll be scolded or laughed at, that’s not going to lead to good things, either. I need to be able to own my humanness. So guess what, world? I’m a human! I have needs! And sometimes I’m going to need to insert them into the part of my day that intersects with others.
I’m going to continue to examine this embarrassment/fear I have behind having needs and admitting that in the presence of others. To find out where it comes from potentially, but moreover, to understand the response better and to ultimately overcome it as one of my fears.
Is it laziness?
I am, however, a little bit relieved to know that laziness is not nearly as much a part of me as I once thought. Now, when I look back on all the things that I have put off or completely avoided, I realize that fear played a big role in much of that. That doesn’t mean it’s not still a problem. It is. But it’s fear, a problem I’m already tackling.
So next time you’re feeling “lazy” and you can’t understand why, consider for yourself, what are you afraid of? It might be fear coming in, trying to fool you into dwindling your life away. And if it is true laziness, well at least you know what you’re really dealing with.
