Eric's Sunday Sermon; Of Apathy and Caring

“You just don’t care about anything” I wonder if that describes a depressed person with a disorder. But probably just a phrase to bait someone into caring about what that speaker thinks is really important. We seem to use our words in gross over statements and generalizations. Shoot we do it to ourselves; “Something must be very wrong with me as I do not care about anything”. That anything word just stinks. See the twist there? The person obviously cares about his not caring.

That reminds me of a crazy new age term. “You need to be in the now”. That is impossible. The clear proper way is to say “in the moment”. Now would change every millisecond whereas a moment can quite literally last a life time in our thoughts. It is funny if you think of the fact that a now would change before you got the sentence out.

So “when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em” in that “timeless” song of Kenny Roger’s song “The Gambler”.

You've got to know when to hold 'em

Know when to fold 'em

Know when to walk away

And know when to run (as an aside doesn’t that apply perfectly Face Book ;-)

I like the term so many say as “I could care less” as opposed to “I could not care less”, kind of a double negative without being one.

This brings us to not caring. The only real intellectual not caring is being in a place where ignorance thrives and learning is not part of life. I check the news on line each day. Let’s just say a conservative cable network and a liberal cable network. I would say that I could not care less about 90% of what they “report”. It is clear to me that secretly the National Inquirer owns both stations. The only I really learn is about what many folks care about. And that is only on outrageous headlines as grabbers. Like SEO stuffing.

I wonder why a gaff by a politician is cared about and a suicide bombing someplace in the world is not, at least by media. I do not care for the terms “mass” media and/or “fake” news. I do not care about ignoring or slanting against good stuff because who did it. That just stinks.

I pretty much care for the term “think globally and act locally”. Although it really should be “think earthly and compassionately and act locally”.

Now let us move onto what caring actually is all about.

Charity is really a result of 1,000 + years of over or under translation and interpretation. And it means love. Notice the difference between a translator and an interpreter. Interpretation cares more about social and mindful meanings and translation is really more about word for word meanings. You do not say “I translated that differently”. You say “I interpreted the meaning differently than you”. A kind of neat distinction. Bobby will interpret this sermon differently than Susie. One may be literal and the other looking for meaning of the whole. They really do care about different things. Or should we say prioritize differently? It is really cool to look at the Supreme Court of the US. (SCOTUS) You get clear lines of translators verses interpreters of the Constitution.

When I am speaking to someone I take care to know how the other person sees things. I admit that in my adult youth of competition I used my empathy like a sword. How could I have used such a special gift in a competitive fashion? Let us just say folks did not come to me to do the right thing but only to win.

The opposite of love is apathy, which pretty much means total lack of caring. I can care about my earth and not care about self-proclaimed pundits saying it is just fine or the other saying that the sky is falling. I care enough to have a very small footprint as our priority. Air conditioning and SUVs are not on our diet. A drought resistant yard yet enough plants to clean oxygen and combining any errands into to one trip out, are our priorities. We do not light up our house at night, we only light up the room we are using at the time. Electronics are not only off when not in use but the power is cut off by these cool power strips. It took some time to get used to water saving shower heads and low flow toilets. We do “if it’s yellow let it mellow, if it is brown flush it down”. Gross huh.

But this is caring. I spend way too much time in wilderness not to care. I can literally guarantee that I have walked places where no other man has ever walked. Not a brag but a confession that I changed my earth.

Atrophy and apathy. Really cool terms when looked at together. Atrophy is the wasting away of muscle because of non-use. Even evolution wise. Why do we have a “tail” bone? Certainly applicable to arts or athletics. Most definitions include organs with muscle. Guess what, the brain is an organ. Guess what, caring is done in the brain. Guess what caring can waste away if not properly exercised. And therefor practicing caring can make that part of the brain stronger. Pretty wild when you look at it nearly scientifically.

Now some apathy is practiced also. When my wife asks me to do something I do not agree with, I force my self to not care about the thing. Why not just love her and care how she feels about it. So I try. One of the cool things about caring. Trying is a success.

Teach a child with care and the results are twice as good as without caring. Plants can be so much healthier if you treat them with care.

It is important to note that an obsession about something is not caring in fact it may become apathy and just a thoughtless action. So many literalists fall into that trap. It is fun to watch someone who pushes another out of the way and says “this is how you do it”. Not even caring that there are several different ways to do it. Seems they care more about being right than the other person. Parents do that a lot with their children. They rebuke until the child becomes a clone. Again caring more about themselves. I would say that apathy and atrophy should be allowed as to the ego.

Love is great in this regard. Again, trying is a success. Certainly one can have apathy and let love atrophy. The cure for that is making love a habit. Even when you don’t want to exercise it you do. Like running for me (jogging). Some days I just do it to keep my body in shape. Other days I am all into it. So I practice love so it is strong. I care.

If we create in us a knee jerk reaction of love, apathy fades away and atrophies. Smiles are like that. Some grouchy people exercise a frown. Yikes. Apathy toward the spiritual of love and God and nature and others. This is really a death of the soul. It happens. So be reborn each day anew. That is what I call reincarnation. Care more today than yesterday. Love each moment more than the last. Love is the opposite of apathy.

Thank you for caring enough to read this.