Without thinking, I sat in a chair after vacuuming (because I deserved it!), then jumped out while letting the profanities fly. Perhaps I need to set up a chair jar for every time I mindlessly sit in one, to go with my swear jar, and my ego jar, and my... I had once instituted a "like" jar because my daughter was adopting my wife's valley-girl-esque abuse of "like", and required us all to put a quarter in every time we misused the word "like". It turns out that was as futile as the swear jar. There are things we all do despite (or in spite of) constant admonition of youth to not do them. I could list them, but it would only become lurid. Enforcement of taboos is the surest way to compel their evaporation.
I digress. What is the point of the chair? Is it a good or an evil? Are they featured or show up in cameo roles in any intelligent discussion of the good life? Has anyone ever bothered to document the effects of swearing off chairs for any length of time? Yes, I can hear, "How bourgeois." dripping disdainfully from a bourgeois tongue. Neverthelesss, I thought I should do some research. My initial findings are an article discussing the history of the chair and a YouTube video about living without furniture.
My takeaways from the research so far are (1) To chair or not is a personal choice. and (2) The chair is neither natural nor inevitable. The first I find rather privileged in its perspective. My bias favors the second. However, my suspicion that chairs are associated with status was only partially supported; some chairs -- the ancient Greek klismos -- were designed to reflect an egalitarian worldview.
The musculature which I have unconsciously developed as a consequence of unquestioningly sitting in chairs for too many years and for too many hours, even though I consider myself more active than the average Joe, is now painfully apparent. More than the obvious admonishing by my irritated lower back at being forced into the personally false rest of sitting in a chair, trying to sit without support is revealing more atrophy than I care to admit to myself. Just sitting cross-legged more than a minute is for me an exercise in yogic meditation. Even on my bed! My vanity is offended. "Stuff that in your ego jar!" it seems to exclaim.
Because I am still too much of a laptop dog, I find myself lying on my bed too much, lately. The need to crane my neck to work on the bed does prompt me to change position more often or simply get up and perform a chore to break the monotony. As hoped, my back is complaining much less at standing up after lying down than it did after getting out of a chair. Perhaps I am really a no-chair person living in a chair-filled world. Perhaps I have too much idle time on my hands.