How To Care When You Just Don’t Care or (What Even Matters?)

An Essay

*To HEAR Corey READ this story, click HERE *

If you scroll the internet for more than five seconds, you are bound to come across a new movement, a wrong that needs righting, or even a whole systemic problem that was here before you were and will be here when you are dead- and somehow you are just finding out about it! I’m not saying all of this to be flippant. I’m not coming from a place of “everyone is so offended these days!” Hell, if anything we could stand to be more offended, but that’s sort of my point: how do we develop the bandwidth to care about more and more atrocities when we haven’t solved the first ones that ticked us off?

In short: I have no damn clue - but, I’ve got a little time before my son wakes up from this nap, so I’ll give it my best shot! I used to have a joke on stage that worked ok, but I could never get it to pick up steam. The premise was that when it comes to causes that we care about, we are not so dissimilar from freshman in college: we pick a major, and a minor. I think the two most popular paths (at least in America) are caring about black people getting beaten up by the cops, and wanting gay people to have the same rights as us straight folk. Which one is your major and which one is your minor is most likely determined by where you live, your friend group, and of course whether or not you have a gay Uncle. Stuff like that tends to make a person passionate early.

The idea of having a “major and minor” in societal causes came to me when I was walking around Washington D.C. That city can take you to another place and time very easily when you are transfixed on The Capitol or The Lincoln Memorial, but as soon as you turn onto 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, you are brought back to reality and the present by the myriad of posters adorned atop tents and stapled to sticks to be used as signs. All written in bold font begging you to stop for just a moment so that you might give what little of a damn you have left about this cause which, at present, seems only important to 7 people, of which maybe 3 have bathed.

I was overwhelmed. Without going as far as signing one of their little “I’m a good person!” sheets using that chained on pen that they have at the front of their Depression Kiosks, I did do my best to take it all in and try to appreciate their grievances, as foreign as some of the language was to me. And I don’t mean that as a pun or as a joke, I mean that literally… I couldn’t understand a lot of what was being said/griped about (I assume)

I think the old me (teenager to early 20’s) would probably not think a lot about it. I’d probably have something smart to say, sure, and I certainly wouldn’t empathize like I ourt, but I think I’d probably jog on, unbothered by the whole event. I also think that a lot of people that I know in our current age range (late 30’s to early 40s) would be downright perturbed by the whole scene, because unfortunately they haven’t taken the proper precautions in order to not become their parents. I haven’t done much in my life worth telling, but I’ve at least done that.

They’d be upset at the wide array of protests, I think, on a subconscious level, because to be straight white people like we are, if the world is truly the way these people say, we must admit that we’ve had a leg up this whole time and our accomplishments aren’t nearly as impressive as we so desperately need them to be. Some of us really need to hold on to the idea that our success is the result of keeping our head down and not complaining about life, because hey, no one said it was gonna be fair!

“Life ain’t fair!” Is a funny phrase. Not intrinsically of course, but because I’ve only ever heard it come from the lips of those for whom life has been the most fair.

Its not just those bereft of all empathy who balk at the rising tide of new causes and movements. Its also those who, as I mentioned earlier, have enrolled in Social Justice College and picked their major and minor. You see they’ve been vigilant about their thing for years. They are a good person according to the book. You can’t just throw new stuff at them! If it wasn’t important in 1991 then it’s too late!

I get it. It seems every day we have a new definition for assault, a new minority group is demanding representation, and a new letter gets added to the Queer alphabet. How on earth are we supposed to care about all our old stuff and all this new stuff?

I think I figured it out. Wanna know how you can develop the bandwidth to care about causes outside of yourself? Simple: you don’t have to, just don’t get in the way of people who do. Let them do their thing and hopefully they’ll change the world that we have stupidly thought was just fine for far too long.

If you can’t help, at least get out of the way:)

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Thanks for reading, y’all!

Btw, CHARLESTON SOUTH CAROLINA! I’ll be at Wit’s End Comedy on February 23rd! Come see me!

*To HEAR Corey READ this story, click HERE *