I Gave You All…Of My Apathy

‘If only I had an enemy bigger than my apathy I could have won’. So sings Marcus Mumford of English folk rockers Mumford and Sons. The line, from the song ‘I Gave You All’, speaks to a lot of people and I would include myself in that bracket. Apathy is not a badge I wear with pride, neither is it something I'm ashamed of, but it is definitely something I believe, or a least society tells me, I should overcome. 

I enjoy wordplay, have done for as long as I can remember, and often inflict it on friends and family in the form of dubious puns. So in this instance I'm viewing myself as either 'Apathetic Man' or 'A Pathetic Man'. 

My natural inclination is to opt for 'Apathetic Man', primarily because it is the less offensive option, but also because it sounds like an evolutionary stage. 'Apethetic Man': ended evolutionary progress when he decided that he wasn't bothered if his meat was cooked or not. Hmmm, although I am often unpreturbed by my apathetic outlook I don't really want to be an evolutionary full stop.'Apathetic Man' also sounds a little bit like a comic book hero, albeit not one whose name suggests he'd be the first port of call in an emergency.

So if I'm going to stick to my apathy guns that leaves me the option of being 'A Pathetic Man'. Am I pathetic because I don't care that strongly about things? Pathetic might be a bit strong, but it's certainly not ideal that I'm regularly unenthused by things. A friend once expressed a concern that I seemed to lack 'Joie de Vivre' (Incidentally I always believed it was 'Joie de Vie' or 'joy of life' though Wikipedia informs me that this is a corruption on the original idea of 'joy of living') and I admit that from time to time this does concern me. Yet I still struggle to see the need to go on the offensive everytime I am wronged.

Should apathy be viewed as an enemy as Mr. Mumford suggests? Certainly apathy can lead to stagnation and hinder progress, but it also undoubtedly prevents confrontation and destruction. Apathy in and of itself is not dangerous, this is only when it is applied in the face of danger or evil. Bodie Theone described apathy as 'the glove into which evil slips its hand'.

There are several inches of snow on the ground outside and sub-zero temperatures, surely sometimes there's a need for gloves...