Apathy

We all have it.  Don’t think so?  Then why aren’t you doing something more productive right now?  The human collective – at least from an American standpoint – has massive reserves assigned for apathy.  It’s easy for us to not care.  We sit on the top of the hill as far as countries are concerned.  It may be lonely at the top, but it sure is fun looking down at all the losers at the bottom.  On a more focused level, what is it that makes us (i.e. me) so non-caring about much of what we (I) are doing?  I think the most simplistic answer to this query is repetition.  Our current place in our lives, whether you are in college or just joined the work force or have a career, can be dictated by what we do, but more importantly how many freaking times we have to do it.  Without variances in the pattern, we turn ourselves into robots repeating tasks over and over again.  Or, more dorkily, we’ve had times set up in our subconcious, in a similar way to Microsoft’s Task Scheduler, that tell us to go to work or class; wash, rince, repeat.  “But you change classes fairly often,” you say.  “Shouldn’t that change the cycle?”  Not necessarily.  While the classes change, you’re still essentially doing the same thing over and over again.  Go to class, read a chapter in a book, do a paper, go to class, read a chapter, write a paper…  That hardly changes for a majority of students.  Some classes allow for labs and outside of class work, but all of that is but a subset of the umbrella that is “class.”  It’s still for some class that society tells you you need, and it’s still the same crap you’ve been doing since preschool.  With occupations, things are a little different.  You’re getting rewarded for what you do in the form of money.  With that money you go and buy things so that you can get as far away from work as possible, away from the repetition.  It’s that small amount of deviation that allows us to stay sane.  I, for example, see many hours of rehearsal and practicing a week.  I dream of a time when I don’t have to go do that sort of thing every single day.  I’d love to not have to think about it.  At least for a while.  At least until the repetitiveness wears off.  I’ve had to do some sort of musical musicness every day (barring summers) for the past ten years or so.  Many people don’t stay at the same job for that long.  It’s this repetition that makes me care a little less every time I’m forced to go to class or stand in the back of the band room and play a diddy every twenty minutes.  Apathy, my antidrug.