I come from school, look at the fruit bowl on the table and sort through the sorry-looking mangoes until I come across a fine one in the middle of the pile. I take it to the kitchen and pick up a knife. As I wash it, I wonder if I take the one with a few blemishes, I could remove them and it would still be edible.

I take a plate out of the rack. If that mango is left for tomorrow, it will become completely inedible, and this one will still be good tomorrow. I am about to slice into the mango and think, “Is it worth it?”

I go back and exchange my fruit, keeping the one I had taken back into the pile and picking up the one I had rejected earlier.

Is making the right choice when it comes to which mango to eat really that important? Well, the thought process we apply to small things shapes who we are when facing bigger ones. It’s the same as “Don’t leave for tomorrow what you can do today,” and a dozen other sayings. Not acting on small impulses to do the right thing leads to the build-up of apathy.

If you don’t speak up when something makes you uncomfortable, you may become more withdrawn later. If you don’t make use of opportunities to improve your life, you may grow stingy and miserable. If you don’t put in a little effort each day for your future, your tasks will pile up until they feel impossible. If you don’t talk about society’s problems, they’ll stay buried and taboo.

It’s easy to stay silent, to do nothing, to convince yourself that small choices don’t matter. But every ignored impulse to do good slowly numbs us, until we can no longer tell comfort from decay

If you don’t walk to the bin to throw your wrapper away, one day you won’t even care about littering. If you don’t thank people for small kindnesses, you may become an ungrateful person. And if you don’t take the bad fruit out, the rotten ones will spoil the rest more quickly.

Lately, there’s been an increase in students making video essays about the education system. Some dismiss it as a trend, but I think it’s a great sign. People are speaking up, correcting misconceptions and over time, that’s how positive change happens.

Many kids are called “cringe” for doing things they enjoy, but it’s healthy to react, to express, to try. What matters is not how you compare to others, but how you’ve grown from who you were yesterday.

This is a small suggestion: don’t be apathetic. Doing nothing is often more destructive than acting on extremes. Extreme actions affect you, but collective individual effort builds either a mass of good or a mass of harm. When you choose inaction, you harm society directly.

The middle ground between extremes isn’t as noble as it seems. “Average” and “normal” are words we throw around casually, yet we rarely see how toxic indifference can be.

Status quo, how good does that look on you? It fits like a borrowed coat, neither yours nor flattering. Yet so many wear it proudly, mistaking stillness for stability, indifference for peace.

But let’s be honest: apathy isn’t neutral ground. It’s slow decay.

The middle isn’t balance — it’s stagnation when chosen out of fear, not wisdom. Extremes may burn, but at least they move. The average simply fades.

So, ask yourself — are you comfortable, or just comfortably numb?

Published in Dawn, Young World, November 15th, 2025