There’s a Better Way to Think About Laziness善解懶惰

To the people who know me best， I am a bizarre mix of discipline and ineffectuality. I rearrange my fridge daily with the efficiency of a professional Tetris player， but I once vanquished a snake plant after forgetting its monthly hydration needs. Waking up before sunrise poses no challenge for me， yet I lack the patience to cook anything that takes more than seven minutes. Recently， I completed a 16-mile run but scraped my knee in the process， didn’t bother to disinfect the wound， and found a healthy colony of bacteria on my leg the next day.

對于最了解我的人來說，我是一個嚴以律己和無懶散懈怠的奇怪結合體。我每天都會以俄羅斯方塊職業玩家的效率重新整理一遍冰箱，但我也曾因忘記澆水而養死過一個月只需澆一次水的虎尾蘭。日出前醒來對我來說毫無挑戰，但我卻沒有耐心烹飪任何食物超過7分鐘。最近，我完成了一次16英里跑，但其間擦傷了膝蓋，懶得給傷口消毒，結果第二天發現腿上有一大群細菌在茁壯成長。

In many cultures and across many time periods， my minor triumphs would be seen as virtuous， and my habitual idleness might be considered a moral failure. Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins1. Napoleonic France， the late Ottoman empire， and the contemporary United States have all generally stigmatized laziness and praised industriousness. The notion that a person can embody both of those characteristics might feel incongruous.

在諸多文化中，以及在歷史上的許多時代，我微不足道的成就可能被視為美德，而我習慣性的懶散則可能被看作道德上的缺陷。懶惰是七宗罪之一。拿破侖時代的法國、晚期的奧斯曼帝國及當代美國都普遍貶損懶惰，贊揚勤勞。同一人能兼具這兩種特質——這種想法可能讓人覺得很突兀。

Yet because of a linguistic fluke， I have never seen my actions as a problem. I grew up in South Korea， where there are two words that can roughly translate as “laziness”： geeureum and gwichaneum. Geeureum’s connotations are more or less identical to the English—the word bears the same condescension.

然而，我僥幸發現一個語言上的依據，以致我從未覺得自己的行事風格有什么問題。我在韓國長大，韓語里有兩個大致可以翻譯為“懶惰”的詞：geeureum（懶惰）和gwichaneum（麻煩）。geeureum的內涵基本上與英語“懶惰”一詞相同——這個詞含有同樣的輕蔑色彩。

But gwichaneum lacks the negative valence. There’s even a kind of jest to it. To feel gwichan （the stem word of gwichaneum， which I’ll use here for simplicity） is to not be bothered to do something， not like it， or find it to be too much effort. The key to understanding the term， however， is how it fits into Korean grammar： You can’t say “Bob is a gwichan person”; you can only say something like “Doing laundry is a gwichan endeavor for Bob.” The term describes tasks， not people. It places the defect within the act. Errands that are gwichan induce laziness in you.

但是gwichaneum不含消極色彩，甚至還有幾分戲謔。感到 gwichan（gwichaneum的詞干，本文用于簡稱該詞）意思是不想勞神做某事、不愿意或覺得太麻煩。然而，理解這個詞的關鍵在于韓語語法里它怎么用：不能說“鮑勃是一個麻煩的人”，只能用“對鮑勃來說，洗衣服是一件麻煩的活兒”這樣的表達。這個詞可以描述任務，不能描述人。它將問題歸到行為中，是“麻煩”的差事使你懶惰。

To me， this is not mere verbal trickery. On the contrary， it is an illumination. Gwichan nails2 what’s wrong with the litany of errands that plague our everyday existence： Many of them don’t merit our devotion.

于我而言，這并不是單純的言辭把戲，而是一種啟發。gwichan點破了日常生活中接連不斷的瑣事困擾我們的問題所在：很多事不值得我們勞神費心。

Thinking about our moments of indolence this way is not a renunciation of responsibility—life still demands that toilets be scrubbed and toddlers be fed. Gwichanism （a popular neologism in Korea） is not an apologia for anti-productivity or anti-work， and the gwichanist will still fulfill their vital life obligations.

以這種方式看待我們不時表現出的懶散并不是要推脫責任——生活仍然要求我們清潔馬桶、喂食幼童。gwichanism（偷懶主義，韓國流行的新詞）并不是為反生產力或反工作辯解，gwichanist（偷懶派）也仍然會履行他們生活中的必要義務。

You see， gwichanists aren’t unproductive; they’re perhaps meta-productive， interrogating the merit of every undertaking. For example， you wouldn’t call the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes， who allegedly wrote at least a dozen books and seven tragedies， lazy. But in the presence of Alexander the Great， his only request was that the monarch get out of the way of his sunbathing. He illustrates a key difference between a lazy person and a gwichanist： The former is chronically unmotivated， and the latter is selectively， purposefully unmotivated. In that sense， gwichanism is a kind of controlled slackerism， a conviction that achievement is possible without a type-A personality3.

由此看來，偷懶派并不是不高效，他們審視每項任務的價值，或許是超高效的。舉例來說，你不會認為古希臘哲學家第歐根尼懶惰，據說他至少寫了十幾本書和七部悲劇。但在亞歷山大大帝面前，他唯一的請求是讓這位君主別妨礙他曬太陽。他展示了純懶人和偷懶派之間的一個關鍵區別：前者長期缺乏動力，后者則是有選擇、有目的地缺乏動力。從這個意義上說，偷懶派是一種收放有度的偷懶主義，堅信即便不是A型進取人格亦能取得成就。

In fact， to me， the downsides of being a go-getter or a lazy person might manifest similarly： Both an overcommitment to all of life’s responsibilities—however petty—and a refusal to commit to any of them can lead to an absence of agency in one’s life. Instead， being a gwichanist might help you reclaim your time. During my mandatory military service in Korea， I chose to cover up scratches on my boots with black marker instead of polishing them. Yes， this was the kind of aggressive corner-cutting that my superiors would have abhorred if they’d been aware of it， but it spared me enough time to read practically all of Vladimir Nabokov’s oeuvre.

實際上，對我來說，進取之人和懶惰之人可能表現出類似的不足：過度承擔生活的所有責任（無論多小的責任）和拒絕承擔任何責任都可能導致一個人缺乏對生活的把控。然而，成為一名偷懶派可能會幫助你奪回時間。我在韓國服兵役期間，相比把靴子擦得锃亮，我選擇用黑色記號筆掩蓋上面的劃痕。不錯，這純屬投機取巧，上級知道的話，絕對深惡痛絕，但這為我節省了足夠的時間，讓我幾乎讀完了弗拉基米爾·納博科夫的全部作品。

The gwichanist philosophy comes with costs. Because of the wide array of tasks that I choose not to bother with， my everyday life sometimes feels comically inefficient. On a recent trip to Europe， I traveled with a portable printer， because I didn’t want to have to find places to print my writing for proofreading. At home， I put pens， Post-its， and legal pads everywhere， because I won’t write anything down if they are not readily available.

遵行偷懶派哲學會付出一些代價。由于我選擇放棄應對的任務多種多樣，日常生活有時候會感覺低效到荒謬。最近去歐洲旅行時，我隨身帶了一臺便攜式打印機，因為我不想為了校對而被迫搜尋地方打印稿件。在家里，我的筆、便條紙和拍紙簿放得到處都是，因為只有隨手可得，我才寫得出東西。

What other people find to be worth their effort or not might be arbitrary. But embracing gwichanism allows me to assert the primacy of my preferences， however esoteric. In its ideal form， the gwichanist lifestyle isn’t sloppy so much as breezy. Sure， some tasks just don’t get done. But the ones that matter do.

是否值得付出努力可能是每個人的主觀論定。但無論我的偏好有多么特立獨行，只要擁抱偷懶主義的理念，我就能堅持將它放在第一位。在理想的情況下，偷懶派的生活方式并不散漫，而是輕松自在的。當然，有些任務就是無法完成。但重要的任務一定可以。

（譯者單位：廣東白云學院）

1七宗罪：傲慢、嫉妒、暴怒、懶惰、貪婪、暴食和色欲。天主教稱七罪宗，或稱七大罪、七原罪，是天主教教義中對人類惡行的分類。

2 nail固定；抓住；獲得。此處為意譯。

3 A型人格。美國學者M. H.弗里德曼（M. H. Friedman）等人研究心臟病時，把人的性格分為A型和B型。A型人格者較具進取心、侵略性、自信心、成就感，愿意從事高強度競爭活動，不斷驅動自己在最短時間干最多事。