Flannery O’Connor’s diary entry on living a good, lazy life
‘Seize the day!’ That’s what people declare. But no, in the mind of writer Flannery O’Connor, that was too much, and also not enough.
The diaries of writers are fascinating. Even in their private correspondence, so many still tend to write like there is an audience waiting, unable to drop the natural flair or avoid falling into poeticism. In short, they’re the best-written diaries in the world, where even introspective wisdom ends up being delivered like a sermon.
On January 31st, 1944, O’Connor seemed to be especially wise. Perhaps it was the wrapping up of the first month of the new year, feeling hopeful for what was the come as the harshest month of the winter was over. Who knows, but either way, her journal that day is a beautifully lethargic block of prose.
Maybe hopeful is a strange word for this because what O’Connor is writing about, realistically, is laziness. This isn’t a sermon about shaking off the new year’s exhaustion and running full pelt into life. Instead, this is a message of surrender to the January blues and the sleepiness of it all. What O’Connor is saying is simple: let yourself do nothing, why not?
“My desk is the monument to my mind, and by the appearance of it, my mind must have intimate contact with garbage collectors,” she begins, musing on the trash heap of her workspace. Clearly not in a phase of getting a lot done or being clear-brained, she takes the phrase ‘tidy space, tidy mind’ and makes it clear how messy everything feels.
That’s when some might claim that the way to have a happy life would be to frantically tidy right this instant and sort it all out. But why would you do that when you could have more fun lying in bed? Or doing something else? Or even doing nothing at all?
Adding, “I don’t live by the day. I live by the second. What I can postpone that is unpleasant for another second, I do.” Put that on a poster. Tattoo it on your forehead. Memorise it, right now, for the next time someone tells you to stop procrastinating. Then, right when they do, you can look them in their eyes and tell them that famed American author, no, iconic American author, Flannery O’Connor says it is absolutely fine to merely keep avoiding everything.
Maybe that’s the key to a good, lazy life. Why seize the day when you can seize the second, and why waste that precious second on tidying up?
“If it requires four or five backbreaking steps to hang the skirt up instead of putting it on the back of the chair, it is put on the back of the chair — to be hung up later,” she says. Marie Kondo would have a heart attack. Parents everywhere, desperately trying to get their kids to tidy up after themselves, would have a heart attack. But for the person looking for an excuse to laze longer, this is dream advice.
But take it if you need it. If you need enabling, let O’Connor be your accomplice in laziness.
