Especially in high school, my parents (at least in part) perceived me as being apathetic. It wasn’t necessarily caused by anything I was doing, but rather by the things that I wasn’t doing. I was not stressing over the little things (for at least part of my high school career)–things like a single exam grade or figuring out what it was that I wanted to do in life. I reasoned that, a) one subpar exam performance wasn’t going to prevent me from enrolling in an accredited college and, b) that I could follow infinitely many paths to infinitely many careers, and I didn’t want to waste my time trying to envision one when I might well change my mind ten times down the road.
I certainly don’t blame my parents for labeling me as “apathetic”–they’re both incredibly hard workers with high levels of motivation. Seeing their child fail to reflect these things to the same extent must have been troubling in some capacity.
Now don’t get me wrong, I never felt badly about my parents’ perception–I simply want to explain why I may have seemed “apathetic.” This deserves some clarity, especially for the folks who consider themselves to be in the same boat.
To properly address this issue, I decided to reach out to a good friend of mine who (although we’d never discussed this directly) seemed to have been perceived in a similarly false manner. Here is her story and her view of the situation.
~Tangential Rants with Allison~
I think everyone should interview a friend at one point or another. It’s a great excuse to talk about unusually deep topics. But that’s neither here nor there. Allison explained to me that her brother was the perceived “apathetic high schooler.” Her “apathy” didn’t fully set in until college. But how her family approached her brother’s personality deserves to be addressed.
In her anecdote, Allison was out to a weeknight dinner at Ruby Tuesday’s with her immediate family (her mom, dad, and brother). Although she could no longer remember the context, Allison recalled her brother saying something that upset her mom. In response, her mom said, “You should be more grateful–I gave birth to you.” Allison’s brother quickly responded, “I didn’t ask for this, I could’ve been a wave in the ocean.”
Allison reflected on her brother’s response: “This is kind of wise–maybe it’s a valid way of seeing things. Maybe you are just an extension of something else, and maybe all you can do while you’re here is just be nice, don’t worry, try to do some good. But we get caught up in the little things along the way…is that good or bad? I don’t know. Maybe I’m apathetic about whether ‘apathy’ is good or bad.”
To clarify, neither Allison nor I consider ourselves (or her brother) to be apathetic. Rather, this is simply how we feel that we have been or are perceived. Instead of apathy, I consider this trait to be an ability to grasp the bigger picture: an ability to look at life on a grander scale, a scale of many decades, or many millennia… Maybe this is just an excuse, but I don’t really think so.
Allison and I continued our conversation. She noted, “the people around me try to out-complain each other.” When Allison didn’t join in on the complaining-fest, people seemed to assume that she wasn’t working as hard as she was. When she did join in, people told her, “It’s going to be fine.” In reflecting on this, Allison brought up a salient point, “People will always see you as a problem whether you are or aren’t stressed. People will call you out either way.” This is not to say that stress is never warranted or is never useful. Stress can motivate you to perform well in school or at work (which, as an overall concept rather than a set of individual events and experiences, does matter). Allison confessed, “I feel like if I get too caught up in seeing the big picture…I could spiral…it’s hard to get anywhere like that. So, you have to have some level of focus on the little things, like the grades or the work ethic or what your boss thinks of you.” It’s all about balance.
But the point still stands: In Allison’s words, “It sucks for people to think that you don’t give a sh*t about things when you know that you do. It’s frustrating when people think that you don’t work hard.”
And if you do think about it, the university setting is brutal in some ways; students are almost expected to burn out over the course of their undergraduate careers (and beyond). So, it’s no surprise that the ability to let small things roll off your shoulders is looked down upon. However, that doesn’t negate the fact that being perceived as apathetic when you really just see things on a grander scale (in Allison’s words) “sucks.” It’s not really fair. In the same way that casting judgement on someone who is constantly stressed is not really fair. It’s all about how we perceive the world, and since there is no correct or incorrect way to do so, there should be no correct or incorrect way to carry yourself as a student or an employee (WITHIN REASON!).
We can’t disregard the folks who don’t fit within the “competitive” mold. We can’t expect everyone to carry themselves in the same way as their parents or their peers or “the average person.” The smaller-picture perceivers can learn something from the bigger-picture perceivers and vice versa. But we matter too.
Images courtesy of Mitchel Lensink on Unsplash and Somerset Sentinel