One very popular way to prevent resolving apathy involves for-your-own-good lectures exhorting another to "get with THE program." THE program? And which program IS that program, anyway? Usually, it's someone else's. Nothing wrong or unseemly about inviting anyone to get with someone else's program, but as an antidote to apathy, it usually sucks.

The resolution, when apathetic (or, when encountering someone else who is apathetic) is usually found a bit closer to home. Not by getting with someone else's program, but in finding your own. That mythical, selfless, single-minded, laser-like focus that's supposed to translate into pure motivation sometimes exists, but it's an unreliable companion. We are each capable of selfless pursuit, but selflessness is not high on anyone's sustainability scale.

Put on your own oxygen mask first. Find your own deeply-felt purpose within the more broadly advertised common goal. Piggy back on your own back.

What DO YOU want? If you don't know, can't choose, or don't feel like you're preference is supposed to count, you have every reason to feel apathetic. Order more absinthe.

If you don't know yet, perhaps pursuing an answer will encourage you. If you're struggling to choose, select some purpose for no more than its alluringness. If you don't believe your preference is supposed to count, you're counting yourself out.

Fortunately for you (and for me) someone's lurking nearby to remind you how much you DO count. Of course their message will land on temporarily deaf ears. They will be insistent. If you doubt this, listen.

The bitter pill I prescribe myself when I find my altitude failing is kinda hard to swallow then. I plug my nose and try to swallow it anyway. It goes like this:

I ask myself, "What do you want?" Followed by the question, "And of you had that, what would you have?", repeated five times. By the end of this ritual, I have usually found some alluring something at the bottom of my well. If not, well, I order more absinthe.

If you doubt that collective work can be accomplished when everyone is pursuing their own personal purpose as well as a common goal, here's a portrait of a rather large group where each person seems to have found one heck-uva powerful purpose for showing up, standing up, and really being there.