I will not submit my Final Essay for English.

I have decided that life would be easier for me and my teacher if I didn’t. I wouldn’t have to waste time inserting adjectives to add to the length of an essay where I repeat the same thought again and again with different words from the thesaurus in order to produce a pretentious work that will merit me a high grade. As for my teacher, she would have one project less to read, criticize, and grade and that will give her enough time to watch one episode of her favourite TV Show.

I would rather be left alone in my room, watching some mediocre movie that fulfils its purpose: to make me laugh. Or I would rather read a book with adventure-packed and romance-filled pages so I could live vicariously through the characters because I could never lead such a life. No, my laziness would not permit me and besides, I’m satisfied lying flat on my bed with rock music blasting from my speakers and would rather not move.

Why can’t life be as easy as that? Why can’t we neglect all our little responsibilities from the everyday boring chores of taking the trash outside, clearing the table, doing the dishes, and so on to the homework and requirements that take most of our afternoons that wouldn’t even matter when we’re rich and forty? It’s not like I’m going to wake up in the middle of the night twenty-five years later, with beads of sweat in my face, calling my butler to my room, “Bring me a glass of water, butler, I just had a nightmare. I dreamt that something’s missing in my life. Oh, I do feel it, Butler! Something is missing. What could it—Dear God! I did not submit my homework in Geometry back in third year! Quick! Grab me a graphing paper and I must compute for the measure of the major arc of the circle!”

If only we could just abandon all our duties, we’d have all the free time in the world! We can do what we want or not do what we don’t want! We won’t be required to move a muscle anymore, fulfilling our hedonistic desires. It’s not like the whole world will stop turning when we don’t do these things.

But then it will, won’t it? Because avarice is our nature. It always starts with the little things eventually leading to fatal actions because we are hungry for more. As human beings, we are insatiable. It begins with little chores and homework. Then, after getting a taste of the pleasure brought by ignorance, we search for more by disregarding the mundane activities no one wants to do.

We try our best to feel that same feeling again, looking for ways to improve it and intensify it because it’s so good, we want more! We are never satisfied. We climb the next step of the ladder. We start neglecting the bigger things, hygiene, cleaning our houses, cooking food, raising our kids, sitting in class, going to work, paying the bills. We take it to a whole new level where we ignore even the routines, rituals, and habits that make the world go round.

Imagine if your mother decided to stop being a mother because she realized having a marathon of her favourite soap opera 24/7 was easier and more enjoyable than watching you roll your eyes every time she teaches you proper manners? Who would nurture you in order for you to become the lovely lady or well-mannered gentleman that you are now? Imagine if your teacher decided not to teach anymore because she found out that swimming in an adult country club with no kid in sight was much more relaxing than speaking in front of students hiding their slumber behind textbooks? Who would teach you the skills you need to polish for your future career? Imagine if your local policeman decided to spend the rest of his days watching basketball games while eating potato chips and sipping beer because it was better than chasing dangerous criminals? Who would protect you from being attacked while walking home at night, or even in broad daylight? Imagine if the president resigned because he decided to spend his hours internet dating because thinking about his happiness was less stressful that thinking about the welfare of the country? We would be a headless nation running around without direction in the international society.

Imagine what our lives would be like if this happened. We would be living a lifestyle of couch potatoes! Everyone would be rotund and swimming in grease. Isn’t that charming? Everybody would want that. Everybody would want a lifestyle where you have nothing to do but eat, sleep, defecate and watch TV. But if everyone is sitting on their couches, who would be providing the daily needs of a potato couch? Who would fry potato chips, make television sets, remote controls, La-Z-Boys?

Who would work in the factories to produce your favourite products such as, donuts, chocolates, sodas, chips, shampoo, soap, shoes, bags, clothes, the soft mattresses you lie on, the warm blankets, the comfy pillows, the large couches, all the little joys of life. Who would direct and act on the movies yet to be made? Who would write the books yet to be published? Who would compose the songs yet to be performed?

No one. So let’s just abdicate our tasks and duties for a lifetime of idleness! It’s fun and fun is good! Is it?

Not honouring our responsibilities will give adverse effects. No matter how little or irrelevant they may seem, even though they’re boring and unbearable, they’re still important. Everything is important, especially the little things, the speck of dust in the air, a grain of sand, an English Final Essay because you never know. No matter how microscopic it is. After all, isn’t the world just a big mass of a lot of small entities put together? Turns out, every small thing in that big mass we call the universe affects everything, take one speck of dust and there would be endless ripples. These small things make the world go round. These responsibilities sustain life.

So in the end, I decided to do my English Final Essay. It may have been a struggle to start, after all, in accomplishing a task, starting is the most challenging part. It’s very difficult to overcome the urge to submit to the pleasurable indolence but just like how every little thing affects the universe, these little requirements affect my life. Visualize what would happen if I don’t submit my Final Essay that constitutes a big percentage in my grade. It would give me a failing mark in my report card that would then hinder me from going to a good college and that, in turn, would hinder me from getting my dream job which would deter me from earning a lot of money to be able to afford silk sheets and a handsome butler with an English accent. But aside from this evidently selfish whim, I think of the future. Languor is contagious. Every lazy deed we do brings us one step closer to the potato couch society. None of us wants to be responsible for the end of life as we know it and because I don’t, I submitted my English Final Essay and here it is.