Throughout my teenage and adult years, I’ve become acquainted with a little demon called apathy. Apathy is not the same as depression, it is not a mental illness, it’s just one of those annoying things that happen from time to time. I’ve found that when my sense of purpose is lost, apathy settles in, and I’m unsure where to move or what is best to do in the given situation. Apathy is immobilizing and draining; it takes everything to care enough to respond to a friendly message or even an unfriendly one, simply because putting effort into anything seems pointless. Apathy is a heavy weight that nestles into my ribcage and squishes everything else to the sides. It suffocates and barricades the walls of my mind with repetitions of how nothing I do will make a difference. Apathy doesn’t stop because I want it to, apathy stops when I do something and commit to it.

You see, apathy latches on when there is no greater purpose to absorb my attention; it sees a hole and fills it. It’s difficult to want to replace that with something meaningful, creative, and productive. Apathy holds you down and tells you to not bother getting up, there’s nothing to see or do anyway. So you lay there, wondering why we do anything. What are emotions for, anyway. In my various bouts with apathy, I’ve come to realize it’s usefulness. Apathy takes away my feeling, it desensitizes me to pretty much everything, good or bad, and I just kind of move. That’s if I don’t analyze why I lack feeling, and why that would be important or useful. Apathy is important and useful because it provides contrast to those sharp, poignant emotions we experience every day. Without apathy, I don’t think I would appreciate love, pain, happiness, or sorrow the way I can.

Apathy may be a demon that holds me down, but maybe letting it hold me down is what I need to do to understand why it’s there in the first place. Apathy is just there to show me that I need a break from emotion sometimes; to draw back and refocus my goals and my values with a more objective eye. So maybe apathy is evil, but maybe it’s also a necessary evil that points us to good.

There must be opposition for us to understand where it is things lie. If there was no bad to oppose the good would it really be good, or would it simply exist? In order for there to be a sense of direction, there must be a wrong way for there to be a right way. Pain is merely nerves telling your brain that there is or will be damage to the body if what’s happening doesn’t stop soon. Pain is for self-preservation so that you know what to avoid, like hot pans or moving vehicles. Thus, for us to have feeling and emotions, there must also be a lack thereof, to balance out the intensity of living with feeling a little bit dead for a while.