The Moral Vision
Idleness
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IDLENESS
The second Caliph, Umer ibn Khattab, often used to
express his sense of disillusionment about people he
had come to like, when, on further acquaintance
with them he discovered them to be idle. “On
learning that he does not work, he appears to me of
no value (he has debased himself in my eyes).”
Whichever way you look at idleness, there is no
gainsaying the fact that it is a great evil, causing one
to fritter away one’s best talents and leaving one
unqualified to face life. A student who is too lazy to
study cannot ever hope to acquire knowledge, or
have his critical faculties sharpened in any way, and
his failure in examinations will leave him without
the ‘paper’ qualifications which is the ‘Open
Sesame’ to good jobs. Without the necessary
groundwork, he will find himself leading a vacant
existence, simply drifting from pillar to post. Even
people who have managed to qualify themselves
suitably cannot afford to rest on their laurels. When
the period of education is over, it is equally
necessary to be consistently hard-working. Many
make the excuse between the receipt of a degree
