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You Cannot Care About Everything
[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]
“I cannot care about everything, all the time,” is a sentence I actually said to someone the other day. He was standing outside a grocery store raising money for an organization that is fighting climate change. First of all, I’m a fundraiser and the curb appeal of someone raising money outside the local Ralph’s is very low. A bit too akin to begging, and kind of distributive in an unwelcome way.
He said, “Ma’am can I talk to you a minute,” and I said, “I’d rather not, thank you.”
And his not very thoughtful response was, “Don’t you care about our planet?”
That’s when I said, “Of course. But I can’t care about everything, all the time.”
In that moment, I mostly cared about entering and exiting the grocery store as quickly as possible because I happen to loath grocery shopping. But that’s not pertinent to the story. I ignored him and went on my merry way.
Here’s the thing: not everything and everyone deserves your attention. In fact, I would argue that most don’t.
As a half-hearted social experiment, I spent an entire day locked into the news cycle and here are a handful of headlines:
