Why Don't You Care ?

I have shamelessly taken this post from the great blog called worldwide hippies, because I think it's great and should be read by everyone. It was written by one of the blog's editors -- Diana May-Waldman. She asks a good question -- "I want to know why YOU don't give a shit". It's a question most of us should be asking not only others, but ourselves. Here is what she has to say:

No, I really do. It’s a real question, that deserves an answer. An honest answer. I want to know why you don’t give a shit.

I want to know why you aren’t interested in what is going around you. I want to know why you don’t care that Tabitha Franklin’s boyfriend beat the hell out of her and now she’s missing and nobody can find her.

I want to know why you don’t care that a 54-year-old mother, Marie Hanson, went missing from a Rainbow Gathering and nobody saw a damned thing.

I want to know how we allowed Johnny Frank Garrett, who was severely abused as a child and suffered a brain injury to be EXECUTED for the rape and murder of a nun, when in fact he was INNOCENT. Oops!

I want to know why we care so much about stupid bullshit, like whether Chaz Bono should be on Dancing with the Stars, but we don’t give a shit about radiation in milk.

I want to know why mothers have boyfriends that beat, sexually molest ,and murder their children, then turn around and say they didn’t know. Yes, you did, you stupid ass.

I want to know why we forgave football quarterback Michael Vick, who ran a five-year dog fighting ring. Are we stupid? I say, let’s just give baby killers more babies, right?

I want to know why you don’t care about the homeless and the hungry children.

Call me a Pollyanna, a bleeding heart liberal, blah, blah, blah . . . I’ve heard it all. And in fact, I laugh when I hear those things. It tells me that you have the energy to take my inventory, but not enough to care about much else, except to attempt to knock me down. Bravo.

My husband went through a stack of mail that was laying on the counter. He handed me an envelope and said, with a laugh, “Oh, this one is obviously for you.” The letter was simply addressed to, “Caring Neighbor.” Inside was a donation slip for our local mission. It said that a $2.05 donation would feed one person. Now, I don’t have money to throw away and I can’t afford to feed the world…but, I can put a mere $5 or more in the envelope and feed someone. To me that is equivalent of scrapping some food off my plate. I call it SHARING.

My daughter said to me, “Mom, you just want to believe in fairies and butterflies and think that everyone should be nice.”

And so I have to ask myself, “What’s wrong with that?”

I’ve asked this question before. I’ve asked why people don’t give a shit. Some say because it is all too depressing or it’s scary or they’re afraid to get involved. It’s overwhelming.

And I agree. If we even attempted to process all that is going around us, it would be overwhelming. So, what if you took ONE thing and put the wheels in motion to start changing it? Just one thing.

The chances of the boogie man knocking on YOUR door are pretty good. By the boogie man I mean, you might lose your job, your house, your car, your safety net, your insurance…a loved one or a friend might be murdered, raped, go missing…and by now you are probably thinking how scary that might be. But, look at the facts. It happens to people every single day–who says you aren’t next? So, I ask you…why don’t you give a shit? Oh, I get it, when it comes knocking on YOUR door, then it will be important, right? Then you’ll give a shit and be asking the next person why they don’t give a shit.

Pick ONE thing. Just one thing that helps another person. If you pick one thing and someone else picks one thing, then we get the ball rolling. Then we get the ripple effect and we actually make a difference.

And if you can’t do that, then please tell me why you don’t give a shit. Because I really want to know. If you tell me then it helps me to understand so I can begin to find another way to enlist people to care about one another.

I am you and you are me and we have to come together. We have to keep reaching out and caring about one another. We’ve got to stop judging and tearing one another down and, instead, keep picking one another back up.