It happened last week. I was debating the merits of the death penalty with a conservative friend of mine (how we've remained friends is a mystery to me) when I realized: I just didn't care. I wasn't planning on committing a capital crime any time soon; what did it matter to me?

Then, like the domino effect, whose validity I might have questioned had I been alive in the Vietnam era, I stopped caring about other political issues. I wasn't pregnant, I wasn't on welfare, I had health insurance, I wasn't gay, and as far as I knew, I wasn't a man of military age. Sure, I had my ideals, but suddenly I questioned whether I would have the drive to stand up for them. Courage, I've got plenty. But commitment?

Up until then, I'd spent most of my academic life campaigning for something. If there were an issue, I'd take a stand. A conflict, I'd pick a side. But then something started to happen as I expanded my knowledge base. The lines between what I assumed to be "right" and "wrong" began to blur. Ideas I was so sure about regarding the government's place in our economy shifted as my economics class proceeded. My spiritual core was shaken when I learned about world religions and read Camus. Even popular TV shows shifted my opinion on the uses of torture. Finally, I found myself sitting at my kitchen table, staring at this guy across from me, and I just didn't care. The vice president of her high school Young Democrats Club just didn't care.

And she was scared. As a politically active youth, I was always taught that apathy was the enemy. Apathy was responsible for the dearth in teen voting, apathy was at the heart of all corruption. Apathy was a heinous leviathan that shot flames from flared nostrils and clawed its victims with nine-inch talons ...And I'd succumbed to it. I was inconsolable.

And then the most incredible thing happened. Lamenting my fate over coffee and a newspaper, I came across an article about an attack on science in Ohio schools. My passions ignited. I picked up my sword and prepared for battle. This was a cause I truly cared about. The political activist I knew myself to be was back.

Then came a second epiphany: for me, apathy was a sign of open-mindedness. It didn't mean I was lazy; I was just learning to approach problems with less mental rigidity. As in the case of the newspaper article, I was learning to pick my battles according to what was most important to me.

I had come a long way since the bleeding-heart 14-year-old liberal I once prided myself in being. I've learned to apply logic before making decisions, not retroactively.

It's true that apathy kills. But it's far more effective to fight apathy with knowledge and reasoning than blind faith or dogma.

I'm nearly 18 and I'm leaving for college in the fall, less sure of everything that I was even when I was transitioning to high school. But I'm not worried. Rather, I know I'm ready to absorb my studies and the world around me, with a mind open to new perspectives, but still able to make judgments.

This will be my last column for the Teen Scene and if I've learned anything, it's that I'll never learn enough.

Lauren Simenauer is a 2008 graduate of Centennial High School. You can e-mail her at cdumler@theviewnewspapers.com.

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