My earlier post “Apathy: Are Your Suffering From Soul Death?” was inspired by a summer walk through the Andalucian countryside when I lived in Spain. I feel alive when I’m out with my pups, Sally and Willy, under the deep, blue sky; the mountains behind me and ocean by my side. Summer breeze, my friends. Indeed, the best things in life are free.
On this particular day, as I walked passed avocado plantations and fields of orange trees in bloom, I came across a donkey tethered to a fence. Half-starved and covered in flea bites, the poor creature just stood there, staring at the ground.
I poked my hand through the fence to feed him a biscuit, which he gently took from my hand. As he munched away, I rubbed his nose until he finally raised his head to look at me. Soul death was in his eyes. This gentle animal’s spirit had been broken.
“Apathy,” I muttered to myself. He’d lost the will to live.
Apathy can be described as a lack of interest, emotion or concern. A state of detachment that results in absolute passivity and unresponsiveness.
Apathy is a lack of feeling. A numbness. A void. A massive hole inside. It’s all about lack. A lack of connection to life.
Having suffered from a devastating case of apathy in the latter years of my legal career, I’d seen the same look in my eyes, time and time again. Until I woke up. Until I broke free. Until I opened up to feeling emotions again. Until I started to live once more.
If you’re not feeling. You’re not living.
Apathy turns people into zombies. I see them all the time. Going through the motions without a second thought. Completely stuck.The life has been sucked right out of them. Just like the donkey in this story. Life passing them by.
Yet, unlike the donkey in my story, each and every one of us has the free will to wake up from an apathy slumber. To have the courage to open up to fully engage with life again. To no longer go through the motions of a life not worth living and, instead, create a life worth loving.
The donkey – he had no choice. You do. If apathy has become your companion and you are suffering from soul death, perhaps it’s time to wake up from your apathy slumber and come alive again.
(c) Samantha Wilson 2019. All Rights Reserved,
