Lethargy: Repose en Paix

To tell the truth, I am an extremely lazy person. It is a part of my personality to be sleeping all day on the couch, watching the "idiot box"(I despise that name, because for me, it is only idiots who find something as wonderfully divine as the television, to be an idiot box) or probably dozing off. When my mum asks me how I can manage to be stationary in one place for so long, I often tell her that it's inertia.

For the uninitiated, or rather, the uneducated, because I am so very sure that every education board in India,(yes, even the Mizoram board of secondary education) has inertia in it's syllabus somewhere around the 6th standard. (If you're reading a blog and you haven't passed standard 6, I'll be mighty amazed), inertia is the ability of a body to maintain it's state of rest or of uniform motion unless an external force acts upon it. I guess I have succinctly explained the term in layman's language.

Digression necessary: Layman, that is one term I fail to understand. I have researched the etymology of the word and I have come to understand that it actually stands for people who do not belong to the clergy. By that definition I guess even Galileo had to be a layman, because there is no way a heretic could be clergy. By the natural dilution and mutation of the word thanks to Chronos, it now reads lay instead of laity. It sounds more like some crazy dude, high on testosterone addicted to getting laid rather than an unscientific, uneducated ox which by the way, both mean the same either ways. So there you go!

Now back to the topic. When I use the word inertia, my mum tends to use the word lethargy. Now that is a big word with many possible meanings. I decided to look up the word and the results I found were quite interesting. Lethargy stands for a state of sluggishness, inactivity or fatigue. An apt way to say, in short, ME. Now when you look up lethargy on wikipedia, it redirects you to fatigue.



Fatigue can be both physical and mental. Physical fatigue is not something I face often, considering that I am a professional Football player and being a winger requires me to be one of the fittest players on the field having to cover up to 10 kms/match. But mental fatigue is something I am extremely familiar with. Having to wake up each day, having to go through another 24 hours as an earthling, it's emotionally draining, if you get my drift.

I also read that chronic fatigue(long lasting fatigue) is a symptom for various conditions. Now that got me thinking. As far as I remember, I have always been lethargic and hence according to wiki at least, I suffer from fatigue. Hence that means I probably have chronic fatigue and that makes me a possible patient of say Anxiety, Cancer, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Endometriosis, Fibromyalgia, Hemochromatosis and a whole load of other not so interesting diseases. Coming to think of it, wiki also believes that I might be Pregnant, but I think that we may discount that possibility on the basis of the vital information that I am virgin. Oh, and I forgot to mention, I am a descendant of Adam...so that decides it. At least I am not going to conceive.

Wiki further suggests that I may be suffering from Combat stress disorder. Now that is a huge possibility considering the fact that I have to battle my way throughout the day against all odds(viz. society, people, earthlings, people, animals, chores, earthlings) in order to successfully waste as much time as possible from the 24 hrs allocated by God Almighty so kindly. But I think I can safely "rest" with the knowledge that this condition is incurable and I shall have to do only things that I can enjoy while laying back on a couch, and thankfully writing a blog is one of them.