There is one word that I terribly miss in English, or one idea rather : it's la flemme. La flemme is laziness, "I can't be bothered", but it is more than that : it is a state, it is something you have, (one a la flemme), like one could have the flu, or any other uncontrollable thing that takes over and tackles you. La flemme in a teenager's natural habitat. There is this idea that you cannot really win against la flemme. You might be able to kick it for a moment, but it will come back. La flemme is that moment when you just lay in bed in the morning, no longer tired, not entirely awake, and completely and utterly unwilling to get out and face the world. There are degrees of flemme, from not doing your washing up or your laundry to doing nothing at all. La flemme is the polar opposing of anything that ends in -ing.
There is the happy flemme, like in the Bruno Mars classic The Lazy Song (2011), or in Libre et assoupi. There is the creative flemme, like the two protagonists in Dany Laferrière's Comment Faire l'Amour avec un Nègre sans se fatiguer (How to make Love to a Negro without Getting Tired, 1985). And then there is a saddest, more existential flemme, like in 1995's La Flemme (2011) or in everybody's favourite mini-serie Bloqués and the subsequent film Comment c'est Loin (2015).
La flemme is fundamentally annoying on many many levels, I will not lie, everybody knows that. However there is a certain sweetness to it once you've accepted that there is no purpose in fighting against it. That's the moment when you climb into bed in the middle of the afternoon and watch a film, and might even fall asleep halfway through it. That's the moment when you accept that this particular day might be spent in your pyjamas, or that this essay is not getting written today. Now I am not saying that we should indulge in la flemme endlessly, realistically this essay will need to be written, this bowl will need to be washed, and more importantly in my case, I will have to get out of bed within the next half hour.
Nonetheless, I think we should stop feeling so guilty over having la flemme : the vast majority of the time one unproductive hour, or day or even two won't change much, if anything. And rather than forcing yourself to sit in the library, reading over the same sentence four times without it getting to your brain, you might benefit from surrendering to la flemme and watching a movie in bed. You won't have been productive, but at least you won't be miserable, and at the end of the day, that's probably a lot more beneficial. So here is to la flemme !
Sleep tight !
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