A friend asked me whether he should get a desktop or a laptop. He wanted to focus better, work more, stop being lazy. We had been talking about laziness for a while and that is where we landed — on devices.
Pappettan listened to all of this.
“Where are you going to sit?” he asked.
My friend blinked. “What?”
“When you work. Where do you sit?”
My friend said wherever. The couch sometimes. The dining table. Bed when it gets late.
Pappettan nodded slowly. “We have a place to pray. A place to eat. A place to cook. The place tells you what you are there to do.” He paused. “You do not have a place to work. That is the problem. Not the device.”
My friend started to say something about how a desktop would force him to sit at a desk, which was kind of the same thing —
“It is like the gym,” Pappettan said.
My friend stopped.
“People buy the shoes. The clothes. The membership.” He looked at my friend. “Are you going?”
My friend admitted he was not going as much as he should.
“Then you do not need better shoes,” Pappettan said. “You need to go.”
He picked up his coffee. The conversation, as far as he was concerned, was over.
My friend sat there for a moment. Then he said he was going to rearrange his spare room this weekend.
Pappettan looked at him and smiled. The kind of smile that says, yes, that is exactly it, you got there.
He said nothing. He didn’t need to.
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