Laziness Keeps Me Humble

         My name is Helen. I am lazy, smart, funny and sweet: an asset to any conversation, dinner party, community and class. I never leave anyone out, never finish anything I start, never remember what day it is nor am I ever late. I am quick to correct but slow to anger. I hate goodbyes, so I never say them. I walk in and out of lives without care or hesitation. I breathe, eat, and sleep, but I do not snore, burp, or snort. I smile an awful lot, often at nothing. People fascinate me but never surprise me. I never understood why spelling was standardized nor have I ever understood the reason for anything I do or not do. I have never done anything successful on purpose: I bank on opportunities falling into my lap. I love life, but hate the way I am forced to live it. I always wanted to be better than human, but have realized that I am pretty much stuck the way I am. And, most importantly, I cannot bring myself to find a job.
         My family and friends assure me that a job is something I must have. There is just apparently no way that I will manage to survive without one.
I attempt to argue back. I try to tell them that I know plenty of people who have not had a “real” job a single day of their lives and they seem to survive. I let them know that true fulfillment arrives when one does what one wants for the sake of doing what one wants, and as I am human and thus on a quest for true fulfillment, I cannot possibly do what I don’t want.
         They don’t listen.
         They seem to think that I have this rebellion instilled deep within me and I will just give up completely on life. They let me know that, in order for me to do what I want, I have to at least partly give into the “system”. I cannot survive outside of it.
         I let them know that any compromise on my part to the “system” puts all that I believe into jeopardy. The system cannot be right “some of the time” when it behooves me. If we find that our morals do not allow certain behaviors then find ourselves being pressured into said behaviors, we must prevent ourselves from giving into these societal pressures. On any level. For me, these specific behaviors include waking up to go to a job created solely for the sake of a societal whim so that I may maintain my place in a society where I may continue to enjoy such whims (i.e. if I worked at a name-brand clothing store, the middleman between a long line of sweatshops in China and the American teen, I would be supporting myself by an arbitrary position essentially for the sake of shopping at such clothing stores myself). Logically, I should be able to just reject working at a clothing store because I do not buy the clothes. If I don’t need the latter, why must I have the former?
         Personally, I do not want a job at all. I do not want a job for the sake of survival in a seemingly arbitrary system of society such that sustains the wonderful U.S. of A. at the moment. I do not want to give that system the time of day, much less my time. I wouldn’t mind working for something less meaningless—like a library or even a school. I could possibly maintain some semblance of existence that way. I would be constructive in society by providing services that are perhaps less arbitrary than the services of clothing stores. I don’t even need to earn that much. Part time… working at a park… or a library… all I need is rent money, right?
         My mother informs me of how I must have car insurance.
         Daddy suggests my taking over the car payment.
         Car insurance? I thought all I needed was rent. What is this thing called “car insurance”? I have managed to go all my life without any awareness of car insurance—except that which a small gecko has informed me. Why do I need this thing that only my mother and geckoes seem to care about?
         And the car! I thought the car was a gift! Something that I could just take advantage of in the world. Couldn’t Daddy have told me four years ago when he bought the thing that eventually I’d have to pay for it? I’d have told him, Oh never mind. I don’t want that kind of responsibility hanging around my neck when I arrive at graduation still without any earthly idea as to where I want to end up or how to get there.
         So I look up car insurance on the Internet.
         This figment of my mother’s and a strange gecko’s imagination is extremely expensive if I intend on living on nothing. And I suggest that perhaps I get the bare minimum, just pay enough to keep me legal. Mother explodes. It is apparently ridiculous for me to suggest that I live even remotely on the chancy side. Should something happen, she says, and I find myself with a totaled car, then I would only have enough insurance to pay for the other car’s damage, no where near enough to pay for my car. And, says she, if I have still not completed the payment on my car, then I would be stuck finishing out the payments on the car without an actual car.
         I check out the car payments: again, far too much for me to afford on nothing. This whole survival thing seems to be falling through cracks I didn’t know existed.
         I think of arguments, possible discussions my parents and I might have in determining what I should rightly be responsible for now that I am finishing up college. I realize it is helpless. They refuse to let me fail. They refuse that I perhaps even risk failure in the slightest terms. I have no choice. They have decided to be my safety net and catch me when I fall, apparently I have no choice in the matter. They must catch me; I must fall. They want to catch me. I want to be left alone.
         So here I stand, stuck. Facing the void that is the real world and only seeing these ribbons of rules that float without purpose but apparently must be followed. I want to cry; I want to crash; I want to burn. Like I said, I love life. I love the fact that I exist; simple existence is enough for me. Why are these people making me do things?
         I could see my parents sensing a feeling of obligation due; they did put me through college. But honestly, I didn’t want to go. I only went because I couldn’t think of anything else to do, because I lacked imagination. I went to college and I did well, especially for a person who was here completely outside of their own will. Shouldn’t finishing what they have paid for be enough to complete my obligation?
         Perhaps it is, I don’t know. They are never clear on such matters. They hate the idea of me being obliged to them, they want me to do what they want me to do solely because I want to do what they want me to do, not because I feel like I need to do what they want me to do. Unfortunately, I don’t want to do what they seem to want me to do: to work, get a job, be a normal functioning member of society. To not be lazy.
         But then one of my best friends pipes up: you need to work and get a job so that you can do what you want!
         All I want is to think. To create. To be. An opportunity to be myself, take care of myself, and live by myself—that is all I want.
         The best friend asks how I’m going to get anywhere that way. I wonder to myself how one can know one is anywhere without first being nowhere.
         She mentions an apparent obligation to myself to thrive, not in direct words, but in innuendo. I wonder what could possibly be a better form of thriving than just being me in the simplest way possible.
         She mentions needing constant refinement and change and progress. I think of all the change I’ve gone through the past four years and balk at the idea of more.
         Change in inevitable. Change is constant. I constantly change. My beliefs, mind, ideas, desires—none of it is ever the same from one day to the next. Isn’t there supposed to be this magic moment when I wake up and say Oh! So this is who I am! I was wondering. Well that’s great, now I know how to approach every decision because I know me and I thus know how I should react.
         It never seems to happen though.
         Another best friend always manages to appear right when I’m about to give into society’s apparent demand on my life. He reminds me that society needs artists, thinkers, wanderers, slackers, eccentrics, perpetual students, freaks, etc. in order to be healthy. He reminds me that if I just do what I love or look for it then maybe my family will come to see that it is good. He tells me this in a text message. He tells me this in a text message after having run into me after one of my multiple breakdowns over what I am to do for the rest of my life. I love him. He will help keep me from being miserable because he hasn’t conformed to society and he has survived, so I can be reminded of the possibility of survival when not following societal norms just by running into him every once in a while. He, and friends I have made by knowing him, is the one that knows conventional life is not for everyone and doesn’t have to be suffered by those who don’t like it. I listen to them.
         I have decided to be me and nothing more.
         Now how do you convince parents who insist that I thrive that just being me is enough? How do you tell the two most generous people in my life that I just want to figure it out by myself and without help?
         They know my potential is the problem. They know I can do anything I want, they just don’t see that what I want doesn’t coincide with what they want. They see my brilliance and talents and wonder at how much of an impact I might make on the world. They can’t imagine my failure. They can’t imagine my striving for nothing.
         I know better. I know that there is no way I’m going to leave a “mark on the world”. I’m too lazy. I’m too content being just me to “impact” anything other than the lives immediately around me. I know I’m smart, I know I have a lot of talent racked up in me, but I also know that for me to play with what I’m good at, it will require my not being tied to convention and it’s side effect will be anonymity. A life ignored by the rest of the world, and I’m okay with that. I even like the idea of living completely out of the radar, and then maybe when I die, they will discover the poems I have yet to write and the paintings I have yet to paint and the essays I have yet to research. Then they will wonder at my unknown brilliance… They will think to themselves, If only she knew what impact she had on us! What insight she had in the world!
         But, honestly, if I wanted recognition, I would go find it, right? If I wanted a following, I’d be leading something, right?
         I just want to be.
         I know I won’t “get” very far because the only place I want to go is where I am. The only thing I want to discover is who I am. The only thing that I want to bother me is why I am. How I am depends on those other three, not what I “do”.