Apathy is easy.
This was weighing on me recently when I was writing about another bad thing. Unfortunately, that’s just part of the job; there are tragedies, and we write about them. That’s an element of being in journalism, and I knew it when I signed up for the job, but it’s still impressively sad sometimes. During the Christmas season, it can feel especially heavy.
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I have a friend who once worked in broadcast journalism. Because he is a compassionate, gentle person, he was sitting at his desk, working on a story about something horrible, and quietly crying while he typed. A coworker stuck their head over the cubicle and noticed his tears.
“Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it,” they promised.
It was meant to be a reassuring comment, but I think about it a lot. The worst part is that it’s true. If you aren’t careful, this job becomes just like any other job; another day, another tragedy, another story, rinse and repeat. Apathy — or, at least, numbness — is easy.
We can probably all speak to this. How many times have you turned off the news or exited social media just because it was too much? Too many wars to keep track of, too many fights on Capitol Hill, too much bad to stomach at once. We’ve all been there, and I don’t think it makes us bad people to need a break sometimes.
But at RiverBender, I see people going through hard things right here, not across oceans or in different states, and they can’t take a break from it. I meet people who are really struggling or who have lost someone they love or who have had the worst few days of their life, and now they’re talking to me.
I’m thankful to all of these people for trusting me with their stories, and I hope they know that I take each one seriously.
Compassion is difficult, specifically after something bad has happened. But I often see it in the people I write about, folks who went through these unspeakable tragedies and decided to start a nonprofit, begin a neighborhood tradition, or otherwise do something for the people around them instead of curling inward. They choose compassion.
To be honest with you, I respect the hell out of them. If I’m exhausted just by hearing about this stuff, it would be completely understandable if these folks disengaged. But instead, a lot of the times they have engaged tenfold. They’ve become a part of their community because they want to help other people through bad things, too.
During the holidays, it’s easier to be apathetic or to turn away from these stories, to exit the browser. No one wants to think about the bad during a time that’s meant to be jolly. But I’ve been remembering these people and the good they do, the ways they’ve decided to help. The compassion they’ve chosen to exhibit every day.
These are the people I’m toasting to this Christmas. To everyone I wrote about or spoke to this year, thank you. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me and, in a lot of cases, thank you for what you do, because you do a lot to help. Thank you for choosing compassion.
And for the rest of us, let’s try to do the same in 2024. Apathy is easier, but it’s also lonelier. Compassion is difficult — and the most important trait we can have.
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