Destroying Apathy by Lauren

Destroying Apathy by Lauren - August 2019 Scholarship Essay

When I was a freshman, a teacher asked me something that I will never forget. I was in a faith studies class, daydreaming through a lecture about modern-day social issues. It was last period and most of my classmates were asleep at their desks, staring into space while they waited for the bell. My teacher, meanwhile, was growing more and more agitated. She had started the lecture like any other, standing in front of the projector screen in her prim black blazer and pleated skirt. But something about my class’s blatant indifference had set her off. Now, my teacher’s black blazer lay haphazardly across a chairback while her pleated skirt billowed and cut through the air, swishing violently as she paced around the room.
Eventually, my teacher collapsed, defeated, into her chair. For a long moment, she sat in silence, staring up at a point on the ceiling. Students began to notice how strange she was acting. Friends nudged friends, heads rose from desks, and phones were subtly lowered into laps. Finally, my teacher came back into herself. She looked around the classroom, seeming almost surprised to find all eyes on her. In a voice more depressed and pathetic than any I’ve ever heard leave a teachers lips, she whispered, “How can you not care about these things?”
No other question has ever made me feel so ashamed, so quickly. “These things” were the social issues that my teacher had been trying to lecture us about: poverty, racism, lack of education, corruption, and other societal evils. I knew, instinctually, that I should care about them. I knew that the mention of injustice and inequality should inspire outrage in me. But searching inside myself, I found only indifference. And that realization shamed me.
My teacher never got an answer to her question. The last bell rang and my classmates’ short-lived interest was washed away in a tide of rustling backpacks and shuffling feet. But the question lingered in the back of my mind. How could I not care about these things? How could I drift through my days and nights, thoughtless and content, while people suffered around the world? I didn’t think that I was a bad person; but how could I care so little when, somewhere, real people were experiencing real pain?
The answer could be summed up in one word: apathy. Apathy is the enemy of change. Positive social change does not occur unless people demand it and, even then, their demands must be persistent and uncompromising. They must care, absolutely, for their cause. Problem is, it’s hard to empathize with people you’ve never met, suffering a pain you’ve never experienced, inflicted by social issues you’ve never encountered. When your only exposure to a social issue is through a glittering TV screen, it’s so much easier to think, “not me,” to choose apathy, and to change the channel.
If I had a gap year, I would spend it destroying apathy. For six months, I would travel the world, seeking out hotbeds of social injustice. I would see with my own eyes the injustice and inequality inflicted by poverty, racism, lack of education, corruption, and other societal evils. I would live with marginalized people, volunteering and helping whenever and however possible. Then I would return home and, for the next six months, dedicate myself to the destruction of apathy in my hometown. I would visit my old high school, my old workplaces, my friends and family members, and I would tell them about my experiences. I would hope that my voice, the voice of someone who they could directly relate to, would inspire the people of my community to overcome apathy. I would hope that in one gap year⁠—twelve months of service and advocacy⁠—I could become someone who cares.