I Think I Don't Care

As I was reading my past entries and lamenting to myself the way my day is going, I was startled by an alarming amount of negativity thinly veiled as realism.

Rotarians have a 4-way test that helps ensure that their dealings are ethical, moral, and mutually beneficial to all parties. Of late, my thinking is earning me a big ol' F.

Kindly humor me as I type this and think aloud with you as to that which troubles me.

First, my weekend was tainted by stopping to provide first aid to a motorcyclist who lost control of his bike on the interstate. It didn't go well for him. In an uncharacteristic move, I chose to visit him at his hospital bedside yesterday. His sisters were the only family there; the bleakness and lack of hope literally ate at me like an acid. Suffice it to say, this one is in God's hands because there's nothing anyone can do.

Then, like most histories, mine continues to come back to haunt me - as though there is anything I can do to change it. Ironically, the two books I've most recently read both dealt with quantum mechanics and quantum theory and the "time travel" that could take place if quantum physics were more fully understood. Believe me, knowing what I do now, if I could go back, there are a few things I would have done differently. But it doesn't matter. People will continue to judge me from their ivory towers for one event or another and use that to discredit anything I say about anything. There is no other way to "right" that which the ivory-tower-dwellers consider to be wrong; I can only hope that by the grace of God, they do not share similar circumstances while on this globe.

Beyond that, I arrive at work this morning to discover that some ne'er do goods tried to steal my air conditioning units. Fortunately, they didn't succeed but it wasn't for lack of trying. If they didn't want the units, they wanted the copper - something that would've netted them $30 down the street. I'd willingly give them $35 to leave the damn things alone. As though my day wouldn't already be bad enough, enduring 100% humidity and 90 degrees would really set me on edge.

But that's not all; a key employee resigned because of personal issues, another went home sick, and as I type, some knucklehead in a fluorescent yellow Monte Carlo on 22s with spinners, some 400 feet away, is playing the rap so loud it actually vibrates my desk. Whatever left these people with the impression that the rest of us want to hear that crap? And why is it that they can park where they live and no one ever steals their stereos and rims, but park in a decent neighborhood, and it'll be on blocks without a dashboard in five minutes?

Someone had the unmitigated gall to suggest that I was an angry person. Anger isn't the issue - I've really thought about this. It's frustration. It's seeing what's wrong and having a sense as to the solution but feeling muted by factors beyond my control: ignorance, ambivalence, apathy, etc.

And hence why I am starting to think I don't care. Why bother really? As Solomon once wrote, it's all vanity anyway. Tomorrow marks the 6th anniversary of 9/11, ironically on a Tuesday. And while we are at war with terrorism, only some of the battles can be won. The overall war will persist into perpetuity. Ignoring it doesn't solve it. And fighting it only mitigates it. Small victories can be translated into a singular term: frustration. It's frustration that drove a key employee to quit his job. It's frustration (and fear) that led me through the events that forever changed my past. And it's frustration that led to this post.

Perhaps it's time I join the ignorantly blissful masses and strive to no longer care . . .