Love this post, and the analogy, Julia. I give way too many fucks, and it’s hard to remember my fields are a wasteland. I’m like that dystopian world you can’t see unless you put on the visor and there it is, smoking in the distance.
A friend once wrote that she had a field of fucks, and the harvest was limited. As a result, she was careful to distribute them in a meaningful way, which is precisely what you're advocating here. Someone- I think it was Adam Grant - wrote about empathy distress, which is a polite way of saying that we give WAY too many fucks about things we can do nothing about. The way I think about it, Sarah, is that giving far too many fucks about shit that is ultimately meaningless isn't just draining, it's indicative of how little we're attending to what's going on inside us. That's basic psychology, but who on earth stops in the middle of rant and says "Gee. I'm projecting." Most of us don't. Social issues are one way where folks who are in emotional distress throw their fucks at stuff where they simply bounce off, useless. We aren't particularly good at asking hard questions like, where the fuck is all that energy coming from and why? And if I'm going to hand out all those fucks, might it make sense to invest a few in myself? I haven't read your book, but I'll bet my last fuck you address most of this. Now I gotta go seed my fuck field and grow a new crop. :-)
Love this post, and the analogy, Julia. I give way too many fucks, and it’s hard to remember my fields are a wasteland. I’m like that dystopian world you can’t see unless you put on the visor and there it is, smoking in the distance.
A friend once wrote that she had a field of fucks, and the harvest was limited. As a result, she was careful to distribute them in a meaningful way, which is precisely what you're advocating here. Someone- I think it was Adam Grant - wrote about empathy distress, which is a polite way of saying that we give WAY too many fucks about things we can do nothing about. The way I think about it, Sarah, is that giving far too many fucks about shit that is ultimately meaningless isn't just draining, it's indicative of how little we're attending to what's going on inside us. That's basic psychology, but who on earth stops in the middle of rant and says "Gee. I'm projecting." Most of us don't. Social issues are one way where folks who are in emotional distress throw their fucks at stuff where they simply bounce off, useless. We aren't particularly good at asking hard questions like, where the fuck is all that energy coming from and why? And if I'm going to hand out all those fucks, might it make sense to invest a few in myself? I haven't read your book, but I'll bet my last fuck you address most of this. Now I gotta go seed my fuck field and grow a new crop. :-)