I Give A Crap And You Should Too

We walk around acting too cool and too strong with our pretend armor we have built up to protect ourselves. To protect ourselves from appearing weak, appearing too emotional, or simply too invested by implying we care too much about a situation.

We pretend that life doesn’t bother us, and that we are simply immune. The irony is, it doesn’t make you any stronger or perhaps more elite in any way. And in truth, I think the ones who walk around pretending to be unaffected are the ones who are afraid, afraid of feeling open.

But know this: It is okay to be the kind of person who does give a crap.

While it is just a phrase, I churn at the phrase “IDGAF”, because we throw it around like a football, yet it holds such a deeper meaning. Maybe I shouldn’t be losing sleep over a four letter acronym, but I don’t believe we should feel comfortable not giving a crap because truthfully, you should sometimes and I bet that you already do.

I will yell it out loud proudly again and again –it’s OKAY to give a crap, it’s okay to get upset and feel things, and it’s okay to care about any given matter, big or small. It means that you give a damn, give a crap, or give any other kind of vulgar word to describe the moment. It means that it has caused a reaction in you with enough effect to cause you to think outside your defaulted ways. It’s easy to cling to this idea that if we say we don’t care, the issue at hand will go away—that If we act like we can brush it off, it wont happen in the future.

While I agree we should not dwell on what’s happened, I don’t know if avoidance is always the way out. I don’t know if acting like we are not impacted by the way things make us feel, is the way out.

But what I do know is that more often than not, you do give a crap and that is okay.

You give a crap because you are human, and we care about events in our life that are important or impactful to us. I think our most monumental moments of growth occur when we acknowledge these flashes and give ourselves the chance to recognize what we just endured.

Don’t feed into the assumption that you must brush off every event in your life followed by a convincing “idgaf”, to be okay. Give a crap, and give lots of craps. Feel things and don’t apologize for reacting to life events. You control your emotions and your mind and if that involves caring about things a little too much or not enough, that’s for you to decide.