Apathy Gravity

In a beautiful missive to her friend circle, my mother (LittleMom) announced that I was "declaring war on cancer and mental illness..." This is true. But I'm discovering that this project is about more than that.

I realized I'm declaring war on apathy.

Yes, here is where I do that thing writers do and tell you what you already know...the definition of a word. But to spice it up, I'll give you the definition from one of my favorite books (Webster's Unabridged, 1913): 

Apathy Anx*i"e*ty (#), n.; pl. Anxieties (#). [L. anxietas, fr. anxius: cf. F. anxi\'82t\'82. See Anxious.]67

1. Concern or solicitude respecting some thing ovent, future or uncertain, which disturbs the mind, and keeps it in a state of painful uneasiness.> Ap"a*thy (#), n.; pl. Apathies (#). [L. apathia, Gr. ; priv. + , fr. , , to suffer: cf. F. apathie. See Pathos.] Want of feeling; privation of passion, emotion, or excitement; dispassion; -- applied either to the body or the mind. As applied to the mind, it is a calmness, indolence, or state of indifference, incapable of being ruffled or roused to active interest or exertion by pleasure, pain, or passion. The apathy of despair." Macaulay.

A certain apathy or sluggishness in his nature which led him . . . to leave events to take their own course. Prescott.

According to the Stoics, apathy meant the extinction of the passions by the ascendency of reason. Fleming.

As a person and a therapist, I define apathy as a marker of human helplessness.

When I began announcing that I will be shaving my head for this project, the responses I got varied more than I had anticipated...and shook out pretty cleanly into 3 groups.

•  About 1/3 displayed genuine excitement and (to the pleasure of my ego) a little bit of awe. 
• Another 1/3 displayed serious concern (as if perhaps I hadn't thought this through, or worse...that maybe I had finally lost it).

It was the final third, who really caught my attention. They were people I know and love, who gave a cursory, "good for you" and then changed the subject. At first, my feelings were hurt. How could these people who know me be so indifferent to something so important to me?

Quickly, the answer came to me: Apathy. 

The answer came quickly because I knew the uneasy, heavy, inertia of apathy well. 

We are all familiar with the "Fight or Flight" response, right? A creature is faced with a threat and based on an appraisal of the likely outcome, the choice is made to either fight or fly/flee. In my work with trauma survivors, I noticed the 3rd "F" = "Freeze." (Which, by the way, I learned from Johan Rosqvist and Rachel Lowenthal.) If our appraisal is that neither fighting nor fleeing will ensure survival, we freeze.

Apathy is the emotional equivalent of freezing. 

When I looked at the vastness of my helplessness in the face of The Terrorist (cancer) and The Tyrant (mental illness), I succumbed to apathy. Lulled by the refrains you probably know well: "There's nothing I can do. The problem is too big." Or maybe worse, "How arrogant am I to think I can make a difference?" Every so often I would be jolted from my emotional paralysis by anger...but soon anger would deteriorate into frustration and then dissolve back into apathy.

The problem with apathy, is that like with most physical bodies, once we become emotionally inert, a sort of gravity occurs which makes it SOOO much more difficult to break free into action or a different emotional response which could bring about action. (No, I will NOT be spouting Newton's classical mechanics...it's not like I have a SLIDE from my motivation and procrastination workshops or anything...)

So here's my mission and I invite you to join me. Let's get "ruffled and roused to exertion" to move toward what is important to us. 

And, what is important to me DOES NOT have to be important to you. I've redesigned my project to reflect this...which will be the topic of my next blog entry. And for those of you wondering: I still have a full head of hair...and I'll be shaving it off by the end of the month. Pictures to be posted ASAP!

Please check back...follow...leave comments. Mad love to you all.

-bevyn

(Please email your hours/donation amounts to: DrBevyn (at) Gmail (dot) com