The Joy of Not Caring About Stuff

I have no idea why we care about some things deeply, and other things we have no interest in at all.

Take the eclipse.

I’m super gung-ho about the eclipse, but hell, I get wildly pumped up for a full moon every month, and find a clear starry night to hold romance, mystery, and, possibly, the key to the meaning of life. So, it stands to reason that a once in lifetime event of a total solar eclipse with prime viewing an hour or so away from my house is like celestially orgasmic for me. But, I also get some people don’t care at all.

Last week a friend admitted to me she didn’t really care about the eclipse, and confessed that she felt pressure to care and tried to be interested enough to join the weirdos like me that actually think these two minutes of daytime darkness matter. She came up with nothing but the truth that she just didn’t care.

Let me just say, there is nothing, nothing, like the joy of not caring about something. Never forget that.

There are so many things to care about, that you are authentically passionate about, things that are out of your control, things you couldn’t stop caring about even if you tried, or let’s say, hypothetically, spent a year in weekly therapy addressing 😉 So, when something comes along that you register a big fat zero of caring, seriously, just take the gift. Take it, cherish it, and don’t apologize for it.

Perhaps not surprising, I care about so many damn things it’s ludicrous. I’m a passionate person. I feel things deeply and personally. I speak mostly in dramatic language of things I LOVE and things I HATE. I speak about how compassion is the most important thing in the world, except when it comes to the guy who thinks he runs the four-way stop and does a condescending sideways two-finger “move it along, I’m letting you go” gesture to me when I am fully aware it is my turn already and he’s not the fucking boss of me or the ruler of the damn intersection.

Deep breath.

See? Extremes. Passion. Possible insanity. The jury is still out on that one. 

But, friends, when a topic or current event comes along and I register zero emotion about it and can’t, for the life of me, get riled up about it positively or negatively, I embrace that shit. The joy of not caring about stuff is real. 

I remember when it out that Lance Armstrong was doping and after reading about it and giving it some thought, I felt nothing. Nothing. I didn’t care. I don’t care about cycling. I pretty much assume most people are cheating. And either way, right or wrong, I just couldn’t get myself to care about it.

Now, I got some backlash from people who cared. They were so passionate about this issue they needed me to be passionate about it too. They came at me with facts and some really good reasons why it was a big deal and an outrage and why I should be outraged too. And I believed them. But, still, I didn’t care. My god, I didn’t fucking care one little bit and I loved it so much.

It was then that I discovered this fabulous, little piece of wisdom. Enjoy not caring. It’s rarer than you think, unless you are a sociopath. There’s nothing wrong with you if you can’t get emotional about a doping cyclist or if you don’t give a rat’s ass about the movement of our planets and sun, or whatever is causing this total eclipse. I mean, I know it’s the moon passing in front of the sun, but beyond that, I really have no idea the mechanics behind it…and I don’t care!

Yes! I don’t care what is causing the eclipse. I just want to see it, experience it, and be reminded of the mystery that is the crazy fact that –– regardless of Lance Armstrong doping, or that fuckhead at the four-way stop I hate passionately –– we are just animals with opposable thumbs who suffered an incredibly advantageous genetic brain mutation who are living on a rock, hurling through space, circling around a very large star and somehow we still get to care, or not care, about completely unimportant irrelevant things.

Life is great, right?

So, care or don’t care about the eclipse. But I need you all to agree with me that collectively we should hate the jerk at the four-way stop.