Who cares? It’s an always-relevant question, and like so many relevant questions, it’s meaning very much depends on tone and context.
Who cares? As in, here I am in my silk pajamas, leaning back on a velvet recliner, gesturing dismissively to the universe who has dared, in this moment we are imagining, to speak against us, only to abruptly change the subject and ask if anyone wants champagne.
And then there’s the Who cares? Which is the one that the one I’m referring to. Which can also be expressed as Who does care? And then worse still, why don’t they care? A conversation that opens a hole in the earth we find ourselves falling into that leaves us quite despairing.
We wonder where, in this crazy mixed-up world, all the care has gone.
How to proceed when we feel the world has lost her cares? At least for me, I think it starts by continuing to explore our own.
At first your cares might be like finding a kitten that’s been abandoned. They are clever, small and deft and like to hide under the couch. You have to coax your cares out, make them believe that you are someone its worth their while to trust in.
It may well be to find your care again you have to close your eyes, reach out your hands and grope around to find them.
The first thing you’ll hit is probably anxiety but keep going; you know that that’s not it (on this, you’ll need to trust me).
You might accidentally wrap your fingers round despair; just untwine them and release her.
Soon enough (they hang around in groups) you’ll get to anger, and maybe even hopelessness and at this point you realise that the thing that you must do is carry on.
Because what you’ll find, if you really dedicate yourself to this exploration, beyond all those emotions, if you just reach far enough, is the flicker of curiosity, a glint of something not at all the same.
And when you see her, not matter how obscure or pointless or non-sensical she may appear to you, you must tether yourself to her like a string to a kite and allow yourself to be carried.
Curiosity is the antidote to everything we’ve mentioned, the secret elixir that can open us back up.
So, when you find your curiosity (and remember, you might have to seek her out, approach her with a certain dedication) and you tend to her most gently, you’ll find your way back to your care. It seems to me that care and curiosity have always lived close by.
Which is when I remind myself: that care is not an observation but an action, and the only care I am in control of is, in fact, mine.