Mr. Apathy

Mr. Apathy worked a fairly normal job at Geico. He handled auto insurance for commercial vehicles. He spoke in a monotonous tone because he didn’t care for bright, flavorful inflections of voice. Mr. Apathy just wanted to do his job and come home to think about nothing, but drinking some wine and maybe ordering a pizza.

Life was generally stagnant for Mr. Apathy. He lived in Seattle and his family, based in Charlotte, gave up on contacting him years ago. Mr. Apathy didn’t care though. He never returned their calls. Mr. Apathy worked from 9-5, Monday-Friday, but lived about 45 miles away from his job. Therefore, including time spent on the road, he really worked from 7:15am-7:00 pm.

Mr. Apathy slept from 10pm-6am. He received a hearty 8 hours of sleep every night. On the weekends he would average 12-14 hours of sleep, sleeping from 10pm-10am(or till noon). If you figure out the math of his time, he only has about 4 hours each to himself each weekday and 10 hours each day on the weekends. That is 40 hours of consciousness a week to himself.

Now add up the time he spends eating, showering, brushing teeth, going to the grocery store, buying standard maintenance items for himself and his house, and maintaining his home (i.e. mowing, shoveling snow, fixing things that break and general cleaning). Those activities add up to about 25 hours. Leaving Mr. Apathy with only 15 hours a week.

Every week Mr. Apathy only receives 8.9% (7 days of the week x 24 hours = 168 hours in a week; 15 hours of true free time/168 hours in a week = 8.9%) of time for himself to think, create and do.

Sure Mr. Apathy could work less, get a job closer to home, rent an apartment, not sleep as much or any of a number of things to increase his percentage of time for himself. But honestly, he just doesn’t give a shit. That 8.9% is all he needs to attend a sporting event, watch his favorite TV shows, see a movie at the theater, go to an alcohol serving venue, etc...

Maybe Mr. Apathy could find a woman to bear children for him and his 8.9 % could turn to 0%. But Mr. Apathy doesn’t want that. He would rather just laugh at his favorite television programs and root for the home team of some sporting spectacular. He may even retire early because he works so hard.

 

But wait...

Mr. Apathy received a rare disease that cut his life drastically short. No retirement for Mr. Apathy! That doesn’t matter much to him anyway. He knew that he was going to die at some point that’s why he didn’t care all along.

Questions for discussion:

1. Is Mr. Apathy acting Absurdist and/or Nihlist in his approach towards life? Explain.

2. How are you different from Mr. Apathy?