As I was lying around doing nothing, I came up with the idea for this article. I started to think, do I actually blame mom and dad for my several moments of laziness, or am I doing something wrong here? On some days I can take on just about anything, while on others, I don't even pick up the house phone when it rings (sad, I know!). That's when I decided to research if being sluggish could actually be a gene that our parents pass on to us or if it could just be our own bodies becoming our enemy.
I first began my research on actual evidence and looked around to see if there could possibly be a gene that activates laziness in an individual, and surprisingly, there is. An article published by Independent says that this gene, or rather this mutation within a gene, is called SLC35D3; it was discovered by a handful of geneticists in China and published in the PLOS Genetics journal. They found that mice with this mutation in their genes had a miscommunication with the brain's dopamine system, which affected the levels of physical activity in these mice.
In simpler terms, dopamine is the chemical that allows neurons in our bodies to "talk" to each other. This "talk" allows us to do many things, from addictions to motivations, and from lust to love.
Compared to normal mice, the lazy ones walked about a third as much, and if they did move, they moved very slowly. More remarkably, however, these geneticists saw that the mice with this mutation had far fewer dopamine receptors on the surfaces of their brain cells. Instead, they were stuck within these brain cells, and therefore were unactivated and unable to function. When these mice were given an antidote for these receptors, the mice became much more active, just like any of the other mice. Luckily, there is nothing to fear as, according to co-author of the paper, John Speakman, only one in 200 people have this "rare" mutated gene.
However, many more people may have a metabolic syndrome, which the abnormal mice were also tested for. This metabolic syndrome, according to Professor Wei Li, the study leader at the Institute of Genetics, can lead to many health risks such as diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. This, of course, is a more serious issue, since a larger part of the population can be affected by this syndrome.
Now, switching lenses and looking through a psychologist's point of view, laziness is just a "myth" projected by our avoidance, or procrastination of getting things done. According to Laura D. Miller in Psychology Today, laziness is just a 'character judgement' that does not help us figure out why we don't put effort into things we do want to get done. She analyzes seven reasons behind procrastination: fear of failure, fear of success, desire for nurture, fear of expectations, passive-aggressive communication, need for relaxation and depression. Of course, she goes into much greater detail within these categories, but her major point is to say that we have so many other issues that we subconsciously try to avoid, and this becomes our laziness. It is caused by the things we wish to avoid and would rather not face. More important, she says, is to consider our behavior as "the symptom of a problem, rather than the problem itself."
So luckily, it seems that most of us just need to get over our fears or avoidances, which stop us from doing the things we want to do but don't want to finish for fear of something greater. While some of us might possibly have a physical problem rather than the emotional one, it's important to speak with a professional about your lack of motivation.
And remember, it's better to try than to do nothing at all. For that makes us failures already.
