Care Less
Turn back the clock to the 1990s, when Friends was on TV and the Spice Girls on the air. Celebrity interviews in the ‘90s were legendary. Asked what his real name was, Beck threw a shoe. Angelina Jolie pulled a reporter into a pool, and when asked if he liked fatherhood, Kurt Cobain replied, “Vodka? Yes, I love vodka.” It was an epic cultural battle of who could care less. I have no doubt many conscientious citizens wondered what this country was coming to.
Three decades later, it’s cool to care about everything. Every social media post becomes a social justice issue. A selfie on a beach is captioned with a political rallying cry for no apparent reason. In a world where we are judged according to how much we care, everything becomes outrage, virtue-signaling, bullying, and THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER. As usual, there is no shortage of conscientious citizens wondering what this country is coming to.
If nothing else, history teaches us that we do not face anything new. We are not the first nor the last generation on earth, this is not the most important election in American history, and it’s not the end of the world. We don’t have to exaggerate our uniqueness or significance in order to take responsibility for the tiny sphere of influence we have.
Cancel culture will die as quickly as it came – it’s already patently absurd and it won’t be long before this form of bullying is no longer tolerated. People are starting to unfollow the so-called influencers who only leave audiences feeling increasingly dissatisfied with their lives. People are getting off social media platforms altogether, and turning their attention back to long-form intellectual discourse. We will find new uses for technology beyond self-promotion, comparison, and mindless distraction. Some of these new uses will be worse than the old ones, but we will grow out of those, too.
History will quietly rhyme again. The current of the culture is in a constant state of motion and evolution as one thing leads unpredictably to the next. The tide of social change is thankfully beyond the ability of any one person (and certainly you and I) to control.
Other people (and even The People – the great cultural zeitgeist of which we are so aware and concerned) will always behave badly. But my job is not to make sure someone else does theirs. My job is to do my job; to take the plank out of my eye before I go around tending to the specks in other people’s.* Counterintuitively, it is through this process of taking personal responsibility and cleaning house rather than pointing out the neighbor’s dirty laundry, that the zeitgeist is ultimately impacted. When someone does this, even in a small way, a butterfly effect ripples outward, effecting positive change at levels we can not know or imagine.
So what does it mean to do my job? Right now, it means giving myself and others space to grow, learn, and be human. Not needing to digest noise or contribute to it. Not feeling the need to have a deep, articulated significance behind everything I think, learn, or do. Doing something without needing the attention and affirmation of others to legitimize it. (Remember what Jesus said about not letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing.)** It means tending my own garden, and dispensing grace and love to those around me, knowing that I will reap what I sow.*** And every now and then, it might mean throwing a shoe or pulling someone into a pool.
J.
*Matthew 7:3-5
**Matthew 6:1-4
***Galatians 6:7
March 29, 2022