Vanquish apathy!

This is an editorial I wrote for the Beacon, entitled Students should get involved, passionate. It's written in the 1st person plural because it's mean to convey the opinion of the editorial staff as it is an "Our View." This isn't exactly God-, book-, or even tea-related, but it does express something I'm passionate about. Here it is:

Wake up! Take your iPod headphones out of your ears for two minutes, and listen. If you only give your attention to one thing today, let this be it.

Stop going through the motions. Stop living your life as a step-by-step plan predetermined by your parents, our “success”-oriented culture or even yourself.

Care about something. Anything. Please. It’s so disheartening to see you stumbling through your days, hungover from the night before. Yeah, some classes are boring. But, if you dig deeply enough, you’ll be pretty hard-pressed not to find something of interest in every field.

Oh, hey, and stop texting constantly. It detracts from your interactions with others. Yeah, yeah, multi-tasking. Whatever. If you’re too busy typing to some entity on the other end of a cell phone signal, then you obviously don’t care about the people right in front of you. You care, don’t you? You must. We all care about something, right?

Doesn’t something excite you, upset you or otherwise incite you? Do something about it. Spread the word. Tell others why you’re so passionate about it. You’re wasting your life if you aren’t truly taking action against the things that enrage you and sharing the things that excite you.

Don’t you care about yourself enough to live your life passionately? You know the old saying: “You can’t love anyone until you love yourself.” Dive into your mind, discover what matters to you, act upon it and, by doing so, value your own opinions. As a result, your newfound enthusiasm will spread to those around you and inspire them to pursue their own passions.

We’re certainly not perfect and are most likely guilty of texting too often and not always giving our full attention when we should. We just wish everyone at UT (who hasn’t already) would listen to the message of Welcome Week — get inVOLved.

This is not a blanket criticism. We’ve met some amazing, passionate people at UT. This group is a minority though. If you attend major events around campus, you’ll see the same group of about 200 faces at all these events. (Also, maybe you didn’t know, but you’re paying for most of these events on campus. Your student activities fees fund the committees who bring the speakers and performers. So, since you’re essentially a sponsor, it wouldn’t hurt to attend a few campus events.)

Everyone else — Where are you? What are you doing? Sitting in your dorm room, watching ESPN’s commentary on UT’s upcoming football season, while primping for that party and/or pre-gaming with your contraband alcohol? It’s great to be a devoted Vols fan, but, honestly, unless you’re an athlete, your only role on campus should not be that of UT football devotee.

Also, this is not ageist. Many people older than college-age simply go through the motions, living meaningless, passionless lives. They don’t realize, or maybe they don’t care, that their actions affect others. These apathetic adults have served as poor role models for our generation, but that doesn’t mean we should sit back and blame our upbringings, or more largely our culture, for our own apathy.

Don’t be a nameless, faceless entity who blends in with all the other do-nothings of this world. Make yourself known; make your voice heard.

Vanquish apathy. Live. For your own sake.