When Fucks Run Rampant

There's a lot in this life I can't be bothered with. It's a long list, so I won't get into it. There's an equally long list of things I do care about – for a glimpse, find me on Instagram and Twitter, and join my journey to inner peace.

The crux of giving a fuck isn't in the content of who or what matters to you, or in how deeply you care. It's about picking the right time to bother. Your experience of life becomes more vivid, brilliant, engaging, and enjoyable when you there's intention behind your seriousness. Becoming decisive in this way might be the best thing you can do for your mental and spiritual health.

Balancing caring and not caring

It's apparent that indiscriminately and arbitrarily not caring about anything is a bad idea. Doing so inevitably leads to an apathetic and hollow life, and, to me, if nothing in life matters, then why go on living? After all, it's the act of giving a fuck that gives life emotional depth, intellectual fulfillment, and 21st-century technology.

Seriousness must be doled out in moderation. Too few fucks given and things cease to have value, making life a dull parody of itself (the ultimate sarcasm). Too many fucks given, and we become overly sensitive, turning society into a touchy, repressed mock-fascism (P.C. culture).

Here's a quote from Jiddu Krishnamurti I love:

"I don't mind what happens. That is the essence of inner freedom. It is a timeless spiritual truth: release attachment to outcomes, deep inside yourself, [and] you'll feel good no matter what."

He's telling us to emotionally un-invest in the occurrence of one event over another. By doing so, we allow ourselves to accept reality as it happens to unfold and be content in who, what, when, where, why, and how one happens to be, "deep inside [themselves]." The acceptance of lack and uncertainty is the inner peace of Krishnamurti's imperturbable happiness. Why? Because allowing reality to be as it is implies reconciling your peace with the unpredictability of outer turmoil.

Spiritually is giving no fucks when life doesn't go your way. I'm amending: "but care deeply about what you do, why you do it, and how those play into the vision and construction of your best life."

When not to give a fuck

When a child doesn't get what they want, they throw a tantrum. As adults, refusing to accept reality as it is, or refusing to reorient one's inner life to reality, is just as immature as a child's emotional outburst.

Yelling until your face is redder than the stoplight in front of you is childish. Berating customer service agents for inconveniences clearly out of their control is foolish, counter productive, and really asshole-y. Living your life in reaction to your circumstances is an unenlightened way of existing.

I'm not saying you must be happy and bubbly about events that are neither. Putting on the proverbial rose-coloured glasses is delusional. I'm saying that not everything requires an emphatic response.

Just like money, psychological energy is a resource, and ought to be treated as such. You (hopefully) don't run around all day impulsively spending money, so why would you throw your attention at fundamentally unimportant things?

When to give a fuck

A question I'm often asked when I say I don't care about something seemingly important is, "if you don't care, how do you expect anything to happen?" Well, I never said and never will say, "do nothing and feel nothing." Not minding the outcome doesn't mean "leave everything to chance" – success won't exist if you don't try.

If you want your ideal future to become the real present, then, ignoring deterministic luck, it's on you to make that happen. If you're going to be great at anything, or "have" a thing, quality, or state worth having/inhabiting, you'll need to cultivate the skills of becoming a master.

Mastery of an academic subject requires (symbolically) 20+ years of schooling. Command of any one technique may take a lifetime. Creating the inner and outer life you'd love to live could take multiple lifetimes. It takes motivation, optimism, and empathy (to name but a few attributes) to craft the meaningful connections and relationships with ourselves and others that we deem life worth living for. Mastery requires a lot of fucks to be given.

To summarize what we've covered: it's good to care about some things, and it's good not to care about others. Moderation and deliberation are crucial when investing time. It's all about the right amount, in the right way, to the right things, and for the right reasons.

When one mismanages their fucks

Here are some examples of the problems that come from caring too much about the wrong things and not enough about the right things (spoiler: the right thing always happens to be your moral character).

Political and financial corruption are caused, on a personal level, by people overvaluing their materialistic security — you and your family will better appreciate the first beachfront property if can't afford the the second.

Racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and every other garden-variety bigotry come from people taking who they think they are – whom they believe others are, and, generally speaking, the concept of identity too seriously. Taking ones' ascriptions of meaning to be a final and absolute truth is the conceptual root of tribalism.

Social stratification and economic inequality result from people taking their societal roles too seriously. "I do this, and you do that," is a factual statement. "Therefore, I'm better than you," is twisting the descriptive statement by overvaluing one's social role – COVID-19 is showing us how crucial janitors and grocery clerks really are.

Circling back

To reiterate, I'm not saying that taking something seriously and caring about its reality in connection with your life is harmful (ascetics would disagree with me). Far from it. To merely not give a fuck about what you want, who you are, and what you do is a sure-fire path to a world of apathetic nobodies.

So caring is not the problem – it's what makes life enjoyable and, frankly, worth living. A form and degree of attachment grants access to the affectivity of life – it's why we feel feelings. Our problems are the result of caring too much about the wrong things.

To reflect back on Krishnamurti, taking things less seriously is a healthy detachment from the outcome of events and, more fundamentally, our relationship to ourselves and others. Responding to the world demands discipline and self-awareness.

Pickiness becomes a favourable deprivation when we choose what invokes your fuck. Deliberation is how we may cultivate an omnipresent feeling of freedom and happiness. But avoid deleting yourself entirely, because attachment is the sweetest part of being alive.

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