Detached Compassion

 

Here’s the thing about not caring what happens: it’s liberating. 

Don't get me wrong, I float in a boundless well of compassion, but it's detached from personal affect even as I feel things to the core - that visceral heaviness punching the gut doesn't actually impact my beingness. I experience good, bad, and indifference, then watch what happens. And, I still take actions I think might help situations or people in some way or other - whether anyone knows it or not makes no difference to me - I do it anyway for some reason. Sometimes people thank me, and sometimes they get angry about the things I choose to say or do... Whatever.

 

It's like stepping off a carousel you were tired of riding - you watch the painted horses bob up and down, endlessly looping, and think, “Well, I guess it just goes on with or without me.” And you’re fine with that. You’ve got no grand illusions about saving the world or stopping it from spinning. The world, after all, doesn’t need saving. It’s doing its thing - swirling, burning, raining, sprouting, and dying - like it always has. But here’s the kicker; you can love humanity all the same. Not in the Hallmark-card, candlelight-vigil kind of way. Not in the kumbaya-let’s-all-hold-hands-and-fix-this-mess way either. That kind of love will wear you out. No, it’s a love that sees the whole miserable, glorious picture and chuckles a little. A love that understands how ridiculous it all is, how we’re just a bunch of upright apes throwing words and money and missiles at each other, yet still finds it all beautiful and interesting. 

 

We’re funny creatures, aren’t we? Building cathedrals to gods we invented, sending poems to the moon, getting teary-eyed over movies where dogs die. We’re cruel and stupid and endlessly hopeful. And maybe that’s the secret: loving humanity not despite its flaws but because of them. It’s like rooting for a clumsy kid at a track meet who trips over their shoelaces but gets up anyway and finishes the race. You don’t care if they win, you just admire the gumption. So, you shrug and let it all unfold. Empires rise, empires fall. Someone invents a new app. Someone else plants a tree. Somewhere, a kid laughs so hard they snort milk out their nose. You don’t have to intervene. You don’t have to solve anything. You sit back and watch the carousel spin, loving the way it wobbles and squeaks, knowing it’ll keep turning long after you’re gone. And so it goes...