I once asked a priest if it was a sin to do nothing. He said it was. He called it sloth.

One time my dad told me a story. When he was climbing Mount Everest, he was working his way up an icefall, five stories high. As he and his friend were climbing, the ropes broke free of the ice and they fell the five stories into the snow.

“When I woke up, there was a foot of snow on top of me. I just wanted to lie there because it was so warm, fall back asleep.”

“Sleep forever.”

“Yup, lots of people die that way up there.”

I nod, looking at the ground, suddenly feeling very old, very tired.

“But you know, it suddenly hit me, ‘what the heck am I doing!’ I’ve got a wife and kids and all I could think about was sleeping up here on this mountain and dying. I got up out of the snow, found the pile of snow where my friend was and told him to get his ass up - or he was going to freeze to death.”

He climbed the next three ice falls, all around five stories high, nothing to stop him from falling till he and his friend got to base camp.