I wish I didn’t care about anything but myself. It would make life a lot easier to navigate.

I bet people who truly don’t care don’t suffer from mood disorders.

I care about so many things I even anthropomorphize. I get guilt if I don’t rescue a worm from the sidewalk. What if it’s scared or frightened? I worry if I don’t acknowledge both of the stuffed animals that sit on my desk; I’m afraid if I pet only one, the other’s feelings will be hurt.

I wish I didn’t care what the cashier at the corner store thinks about me, or what the person at the checkout at the grocery store thinks, or what the driver in the car next to mine has concluded about my worthiness.

I wish I didn’t care about the homeless people in our town, or the drug addicts, or the random people I encounter who seem like they have troubles.

I wish I didn’t care that it’s going to be forest fire season soon, and it’s going to be bad – worse than last year – and it’s going to continue to get worse every year because climate change is happening. I wish I didn’t care that politicians can’t get off their collective, essentially money-grubbing asses and work on the problem.

I wish I didn’t care that we’re drowning in plastic.

I wish I didn’t care that people in countries I don’t even live in are suffering and dying, mostly because of greed and shitty behaviour by other people.

I wish I didn’t care that there’s too much violence in the world.

I wish I didn’t care that my kids have to navigate turning into adults and they’re going to find out that it’s hard and often sucky.

All those cares turn into worries, which turn into stresses, which give birth to anxiety, which exacerbates the depression and there go the mood disorders.

The philosophies I read suggest over and over that you focus your energies on things that are in your control. They point out that very little is; I agree completely yet I still find it challenging to focus on my own circle of influence.

I wonder what it would be like to be able to shut the caring down and limit the scope? I have friends who do it. They aren’t uncaring per so, they’re just selective. They care about a few things intensely – their friends and family, their day to day life – and pay no attention to anything beyond their circle of influence. Natural stoics, I guess. Their lives run smoothly. They aren’t dragged down by current events and global knowledge and worries about this, that, and the other. They aren’t stressed, depressed, and angst ridden.

Sometimes, I think I’d like to be that way. It would be a less stressful kind of life. I know how to do it, how to narrow the focus and limit the exposure. I know the what. The easiest way is to shut down most of your inputs. Definitely get offline. But something happens inside me when I think about doing it and I can’t. My anxiety does not like the idea of change, even if the change would ultimately prove to be beneficial, even when I know it needs to be done.