If my capacity to care was like light waves right now, it would not be a laser beam, utterly focussed on one goal. It would not be a spotlight, panning across the salient and important issues of life. It would be like a morose rainbow, refracted across a spectrum of crippling angst about the Climate Crisis, fear for our survival as individuals and as a collective, face-palming about the stupidity of the world’s superpowers, on top of the normal worries and cares of life - will people like my posts? I’m going to be late! Am I actually good at my job, or are they just saying that, and what even is the meaning of life?
It is in this vast spectrum of dissipated cares and scattered sorrows that we find ourselves depleted, unable to plan for the future, or imagine much past a month from now. I am aware that Beirut has just imploded, and that the US is on the brink of collapse, that there is a refugee crisis from Syria to Venezuela to Sudan. As much as I might want to help, I cannot help others until I help myself. Our uncertainty about our future here rings like a siren in my ears, much like the literal siren that has been going outside our building for the ENTIRE.WEEKEND.SO.FAR, and its shrill unrelenting whining drowns out thoughts or cares for anything else.
I feel utterly disempowered by the bigness of the world’s problems, and my comparative smallness.
For me, the knee-jerk response to that is sinking into a slough of ambivalence, a dearth of caring.
How many times a day right now are you catching yourself saying ‘I simply don’t care’?
I don’t care about the homeless people that my heart used to bleed for. I don’t care about the politicking of politics, I just want functional leaders that can competently do the job. I don’t care about a virus ruining the world, I just want to live my life. I don’t care about where I’ll be in 10 years or 10 months, I’m looking at 10 days and thinking ‘How do I cope with another lockdown?’
Sound familiar?
There must be a way to build the capacity to care. It’s a tall ask at such a time, but I have to believe that we can overcome our current circumstances.
How can we flex our muscle of intention, should we so choose?
How else can we describe intention? Give a damn. Give a fuck. Give a care. Give a hoot. Give a toss. Give a shit. Give a rat's ass. Whatever it is - you are giving something. By the very vernacular that we use to describe it, it is not a passive act; it requires something from you. I think that might get to the heart of why it is so very difficult to do.
For those who are disinclined towards certain language, I will use a * in place of whatever noun it is that you choose to describe what you are giving.
I woke up at 6am this morning, a Saturday morning, and since then I’ve argued with my father about the reliability of various sources in regard to find out information about COVID-19, I’ve read through an article about systemic racism in the US - twice, because it had lots of statistical analysis and big words and hurt my brain, and I’ve listen to this drivel of a podcast about ‘Rapid onset gender dysphoria’ and how it’s ‘stealing’ a whole generation of American girls.
It’s 11am on what was supposed to be a lazy Saturday and I have used up all my limited *s that I had to give today, and none of them were on anything to do with me.
I do not have COVID, I don’t believe there’s a government conspiracy to try and inject you with something when/if they find a vaccine for it. I am not a US citizen, nor a BIPOC, nor any flavour of LGBTQI+, nor a teen, nor a parent, and frankly none of these remotely personally affect me.
I’m all for caring about other people’s causes, and each of those need allies and advocates, and for people to understand. But at what cost?
5 hours of substantial research and what have I to show for it, other than now wondering how many teens in the US are *really* transgender, and who is profiting from them being so?
Is this the very best use of my time? My intention? My *s? Is this the very best use of me?
Have any of my opinions changed? Uh, perhaps I’m slightly more open to the possibility of there being a cure for COVID through a drug cocktail concocted by a New Jersey doctor with some dubious clinical techniques, and maybe slightly less open than I was to the possibility that the fleeting notion of a teen wanting to change gender should be unequivocally given the green light without letting them know the fullness of that decision.
The mental gymnastics required to try and navigate our current world and be politically correct is just exhausting. No wonder people stop trying.
I did not set points of intention for today, except for doing some yoga to help my sore neck and finish reading the 17 page academic study so I can have an informed conversation and not sound like a luddite when next I see a particular friend, (and also to ‘win’ an ongoing argument with a Facebook friend from high school. No one ever really wins in online debates though, right?)
Because I had little in the way of agenda for today, my day was easy to hijack by other people’s cares, agendas and intentions.
The old truism of teachers everywhere rings through my mind as I review my day so far:
Those who fail to plan
Plan to fail.
Perhaps failure is a bit of a harsh assessment of my day so far. Learning surely is never a failure. However, sacrificing my agenda, my wants and my desires for others’ causes ad infinitum is certainly not being true to myself.
Should I give a * about rainbow rights, about structural racism, and about whether or not there’s a cure for a disease? Yes. Ostensibly these are things that do need to be cared about, they do need to be researched, funded and discussed.
But is this the very best use of the limited *s I have to give today?
I’m not convinced.
When we spend all our available *s on other people’s causes - however noble - there are very few left for ourselves.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. It is just a thing.
When thinking about how scarce *s are, I marvel/despair at people who can wantonly give them to things like obsessively hand wringing over sport, arranging cushions, dog grooming, reading gossip magazines, or even fighting with people on the internet to try and prove a point, when one knows it will only lead to bad blood and people doubling down. (Yes, I get frustrated with myself…)
I think that excessive cleaning is a waste of time and *s. That counting calories is a waste of time and *s. Shopping for shit you don’t need is a waste of money, time and *s.
I expend more *s than I would like to mention on analysing how many *s other people waste. Obviously not a great use of my *s.
There is an austerity of *s, generally. People have a very finite amount of *s to give and everyone, from every platform is screaming and clamouring to get hold of some of your *s.
There are so very many issues in the world at large, that I would rather spend my very limited amount of *s on such things are solving global poverty, working towards a circular economy, and saving the environment for future generations.
But right now, I don’t feel like I have spare *s for these big picture things. My *s are wasted on minutia such as ‘Do I have a mask with me today?’, ‘Did I remember hand sanitizer?’, ‘Can you catch Covid-19 through particles landing in your eyes?’, ‘Is it safe to take the kids to x place right now?’. I detest this perceived waste of *s, but also in order to not get sick and eventually have the luxury of caring about big picture things again, one needs to care about petty minutia right now.
So many of our *s are stolen from us during inane daily activities. I must expend fucks on things like checking whether the rubbish is empty, if my pits are shaved, if there’s still toilet paper in the house, how much money is in the account attached to the card I currently am carrying with me, what is my employer REALLY thinking of me at this time, did I remember to water the plants? Is there enough food in the house for dinner tonight or do I need to attempt to reserve enough *s to go out of my way to procure more food on the way home? Do I even need to eat tonight?
Our *s are stolen by that advertisement on the bus, the *s we spend on road rage from the wankers who hold us up in our commute, the slowness and tedium of the work day, and the *s we must give about the perceptions of colleagues, employers and customers.
Not to mention the *s that all consuming dread takes hold when one strays into thinking about things like what happens when we die? Why am I really here? What does my life actually mean? Do I, in fact, actually matter, or am I just a meat popsicle with complicated feelings?
When you look at all the various phenomena that the human mind has to try and juggle in a day in order to stay alive today, and to try and make tomorrow an even more enjoyable day, then it really is amazing we get anything much accomplished.
In the same way we budget our money, I think there must be a way we can budget our *s so that we save them for the things that we deem the most important, and not have them sucked into the vacuum of useless crap along the way.
I would like to offer 5 key suggestions for giving a * when it is really really hard to care.
Limit what you say yes to
There are myriad things demanding our time, *s, and attention. You can’t care about everything all at once forever. Find points of intention, and focus on those for now. Choose carefully what you will say yes to. Write them down. Set time aside to give a * about these things. Find friends who also give a * about it. Perhaps, join a group or a club.
Knowing what you stand for limits what you will fall for. Knowing what you’re about means other people’s agendas can’t railroad yours.
Plan ahead
It requires less cognitive effort to enact a plan that is already made, than it does to try and make it up on the spot. Sit down the night before and write your ‘musts’ and ‘mights’ on two separate lists. If you get to the mights tomorrow, bravo, go you.
Set reminders on your phone, or plaster your walls with post -it notes if that’s more your jam.
When you plan how to spend your *s, you are more likely to spend them where you want to spend them, rather than simply wherever the day takes you. In my mind, not planning for the day is like the difference between trying to canoe down a river with or without a paddle. It might be a wild ride without, and it might work out - but it is good luck rather than good management. Steer your day, as you would paddling a canoe down a river. Going with the flow might very well lead you over a waterfall or down some dicey rapids.
Yoga classes start and end with the idea of ‘set an intention’ for this practice or for this day. To whatever degree you are comfortable with, set an intention for a day. I have learned that I am unlikely to get done more than a post-it note’s worth of things in a day. If it can’t fit on one post it note, it’s too big for today.
Spend some of your *s on something bigger than yourself
Obviously looking after yourself is important, and you need to spend a fair amount of your *s on yourself, but balance that with bigger picture *s as well. I try to work on a strategy of ruthless self care: looking after myself so that I can look after others.
Spending all of your *s on yourself, your vanity, your wants, your desires, your interests is a surefire way to end up with a really insular, small life.
People function best when they have a crusade, a cause to fight for, a purpose so much bigger than them. What’s yours? This world is far from perfect. Pick a thing and get passionate.
Give yourself permission to run out of *s for certain things
Not giving a * about some things leaves you more *s for other things that you value. Just because someone you care about wants you to give a *, doesn’t mean it is a good use of your *s.
If you are empathetic and prone to giving a * about ALL.THE.THINGS, there will still be a Give a * hierarchy in your head. Have a think about the most important things, and maybe make a list of 3-5 things that are super important to you at the moment.
It is only Facebook that gives you infinite ‘care’ capacity. Spend your cares wisely.
Spend some *s on growing your *s budget over time
Think of it like a muscle. The more *s you put into building your capacity for *s, the more capacity you will have to build your capacity of *s. When you create the habit of caring, setting an intention, giving a *, then it becomes second nature.
If you default to ‘I just don’t care’, and that is the language you use around exercise, diet, sleep, job options, where you holiday, where you spend your money, then it is very easy to just not really give a * about anything much. Try spending just a few *s on each of those things, and you’ll find it easier and easier to continue to level up.
Ideally, giving a * will become part of your new normal, and no longer a conscious, effortful task.
(This might be lies, I’m still at the I just don’t care phase about quite a few of those.)
The More *s You Give, The Better You’ll Get at Giving a *
When we give *s in order to grow our capacity to care, our capacity to give a *, then we can afford to be more particular in the future with our *s.
I love the adage ‘think global, act local’. We are all interconnected, and each of our decisions to use plastic, or to drive a car, or have a child, or go on holiday, or wear a mask does impact on others to some degree.
Something I really admire about my friends, particularly my North American friends, is their capacity for caring about what I would consider minutia. They’ve looked at all the restaurants, and know which ones they want to go to. They have a handle on which bars are the best in town. They know exactly where they want to go on holiday. There is so much research, planning and intention that goes into their daily lives, it astonishes me.
I used to think that ‘The devil is in the detail’ meant that you should stay as far away as possible from caring about details as you can. I consider myself a bigger picture thinker, but much like a tapestry, the bigger picture is created from thousands of individual stitches, so too are the tapestries of our lives woven from individuals decisions, and whether or not we choose to give a * about a particular thing.
What patterns are you weaving in the tapestry of your life? Where are you spending your *s?
Keep flexing that muscle of intention, that muscle of giving a *, and watch it grow.