Written 2025-01-21
Apathy.
The ones before me had defined it—απάθεια. A state of inner tranquility and balance in one's mind.
And what's become of it now? Apathy? Really? Does inner tranquility, now, truly mean loss of desire? It's always meant that—yes—but desire itself has lost its old connotation.
Απάθεια is admirable.
Apathy is depressing.
And I'm apathetic.
I've not lived long. I've not even lived enough to fend for myself. From the haze of my ragged hypoxias, I'll watch the world crumble. But that's a distant future. Here, there is none of that. Here, my time, there's good, there's bad. And I care nary.
It's not been like this since the beginning, and it won't last like this forever. Just like απάθεια—its meaning—, my apathy will morph over time and blossom into desire once more. And as such, the cycle continues. The vignette continues.
But if I am not what I was, how will I know what I might be? The future world will fall, just, when? And could this knowledge be a cause for apathy? Maybe. I'm not what I might have, but what I am is fluid. If only one could pinpoint which fluid. For, as liquids have properties, one's essence has them too. They're just too intangible to analyse, categorise, comprehend.
My apathy will stay with me, and dance with her older sister, απάθεια, and perhaps even their cousins—αταραξία, ευδαιμονία? They all remain as part of the self. And the self is not, nor is it part of, a substance, for its essence always changes, and its base—no matter how real it could strive to be—is too complex to define as substance.