Apathy

When I was listening to a presentation, I heard the speaker say… ‘a person with Parkinson’s may not exercise because of apathy.’ I wondered if that might be MY excuse for not remembering to exercise as often as I should? NO, I’m just easily distracted, by researching and working to create blog posts, and weeding, or gardening, or volunteering to do service projects… I want to do research on family history, and write more family history.  In other words:   I simply never found exercising rewarding.

Still, I wonder, can you have apathy about one thing, if you are able to focus on other things? According to ‘Psychology Today’…

“What, exactly, is apathy? In a sense, it’s something like falling in love. You can describe it all you want, but until you’ve experienced it, you can only guess at what it feels like. Paradoxically, what makes the feeling of apathy unique is that it’s essentially the feeling of not feeling. It’s something that at some point in your existence you’ve encountered. Whenever you feel that something vital is missing from your life, yet lack the  drive to pursue it, you’re afflicted with this curiously “emotionless” emotion.”

“Through much psychological research, it’s now accepted science that you must experience feelings about something if you’re to take personally meaningful action on it. And without any compelling emotion to direct your behavior—and apathy literally means “without feeling”—you just aren’t sufficiently stimulated to do much of anything.”

“True, apathy is a feeling. But it’s also an attitude. And sadly, that attitude is one of indifference . . . unconcern . . . unresponsiveness . . . detachment . . . and dispassion. Such an attitude saps you of so much energy that you feel lethargic, listless, and enervated—almost too “paralyzed” to act—and certainly without the will to do so. Which is why apathetic individuals are easily identified by their very passivity. Their interest in confronting life’s challenges is seriously compromised. They just don’t care enough. And frankly, they don’t care that they don’t care.”

………………… ” So they can’t think of anything worth striving for.”

I liked the attitude a fellow PwP shared:”there is no easy answer I have yet found to apathy. It is always there, as patient as the law of gravity. Fight it directly and it will temporarily retreat. The only partially successful response I ever found was in Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”. “When faced with an unbeatable foe, you do not fight, you deny him victory.”