I got my nose pierced the summer after I turned 15 — the last summer I would attend summer camp as a camper and not as a counselor. I arrived at camp with dyed hair, band T-shirts, a bad attitude and a freshly pierced nose to match. I thought I was hot stuff as I sat in the back of our “Girls Camp” meeting, rolling my eyes at rules about not rolling your shorts up too high and behaving properly around boys. I thought I was edgy because I drank Smirnoff Ice that year. Deep down though, I loved camp and had been going there for six summers for the same reason: to have fun and to become more confident.
As I developed from childhood to young adulthood, how I felt I was perceived acted as a center of gravity for my decisions and my behavior. Even after two decades in my skin, I still find myself making choices based in shielding the judgments of others, and I’m not alone. I’ve had countless interactions with kids who could not be bothered and kids who made fun of someone else in order to protect themselves.
Staying apathetic means you will never seem like a loser. Or, worse, you will never be let down. Showing your passion is the equivalent of opening up your rib cage and placing your guts on the table. Being interested in something means vulnerability. But it doesn’t have to — there are other options.
Fifteen-year-old me wanted to be cool so badly that I would let this urge hinder the things I was passionate about. The good news is that my bad attitude lasted four hours total, and by the end of dinner I was laughing loudly and dancing on my chair along with everyone else. No one was too cool for camp.
Now, what if you apply this to life?
The ability to abandon all apathy creates space for positivity. You can tell someone you like their eyebrows or that the Disney Channel show “Girl Meets World” actually teaches you life lessons. You can fall down in the middle of a hallway and not obsess about it all afternoon. You can express your unconventional interests and find friends in the strangest places. When you speak, your words hold power because they’re coming from a place of security and love. You learn to accept failure, and suddenly you’re not so vulnerable. You become comfortable with who you are when you look in the mirror and when you raise your hand in class.
Apathy is just a comfort zone where it’s easier to put on a facade than to be yourself. It seems appealing to fall into that trap, especially when the “cool factor” is applied. Life is more nuanced and more complicated than being a cool kid. In college, popularity doesn’t really exist, but apathy runs rampant. Somebody already has enough friends or refuses to order Starbucks because it’s too basic. Apathy seems like the only way to survive sometimes. However, embracing who you are and your passions is so much easier than trying to fit into an apathetic box of a person who sits in the corner at parties silently judging everyone. I’ll be on the dance-floor requesting “Ignition (Remix)” too many times and dancing with my friends — you should join us.
This summer, at that same summer camp, I poorly beat-boxed on the mic, acted like a goober on tables and wore tissue paper on my face to look like a goblin, all in front of a crowd of 300 kids and co-workers. Acting apathetic is just a symptom of caring too much about what other people think. No one is too cool to enjoy life.
