The unsubtle art of giving a f*ck

The Reading List for 25 Aug 23

Photo by Matt Hanns Schroeter on Unsplash

In the early mornings, I am walking again.

Through the woods.

Alone.

The world is always better at this hour, just as the sun is coming up. The fleeting time between dark and light. Slow change. Like seeing the world for the first time but being aware of it, unlike the real first time.

Seeing Tasting. Smelling. Feeling.

Mostly in the rain.

But I am moving, even soaked to the skin, which is always better. Good for an old arthritic, not just of bones but of soul. If you do not move, the one stiffens like the other until there is no more moving.

Then darkness.

The doctors never tell you *that* symptom, about the soul. That side-effect.

Moving is always better.

There will be time enough for not moving, for darkness.

One day.

But not *this* day.

Today, I am walking.

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A good friend flipped me the title of a book that you will see in bookstores. The subtle art of not giving a fuck. Not sure if he’d read it but the title reminded him of the way I write. Not giving a fuck. Like the way I wrote out the whole four-letter-word rather than do as the publishers of that book did and put a little star, an asterisk, in place of the “u”.

Not sure if he’d read the book, but if he did, then he’d know the book is actually about giving a fuck. You choose what you care about and put your energy into that. We all do it. Every day. Most times, we are not even aware of what we are doing.

But we choose.

Choice is the essence of life. Intention. The most meaningful thing we do.

Lawyers and priests know intention is crucial. They talk of it mostly in the sense of transgression. Something bad. Mens rea. A guilty mind. Sin. We commit sin in the Roman dogma when we *want* to do something against God’s commandment. The Original Sin in Eden was a choice.

Intention also goes with things that are good although we seldom think of that. But intention and choice are inextricably linked.

That's what makes some choices the scariest ones. The ones that often come with the most meaning are the choices we do knowingly.

Love, someone yells from the back of the room. Love is the essence of life. Love is all you need.

“You don’t get to choose your obsessions,” John Irving said in interviews a few years ago. “Your obsessions choose you.”

Love is the same thing. We do not choose who we love. This is the truth of our age. Nor do we know why we love the people we do. We simply do.

But we choose what to do about both our obsessions and about our loves.

That is the essence of life.

Even the ones we fall into naturally, effortlessly. They also involve a choice. We simply don’t see it as plainly as the ones that put our hearts or lives at risk.

Choice is still there. And the choices we make that can have the most lasting impact are often the ones we do consciously, intentionally, in spite of.

The truth of that is all around us.

“Mistletoe can be deadly if you eat it.”

“But a kiss can be even deadlier if you mean it.”

The first parachute jump is not the one that matters. Ask anyone who has gone out the door of an airplane with a few bits of fabric strapped to their back. It’s the one you do *after* that first one that matters. And the one you do after there’s a snag with the fabric bits and you come out alive somehow. The time after the frightening one, the near death one, when you know that shit really can go wrong. When you’ve had the horrid experience and yet you do it again. That's the meaningful choice.

Or after a loss, bad turn, accident, calamity of any kind in life and you move forward, pick out the important stuff, discard the rest, and keep going.

Those conscious choices tell the world what we value. It’s the stuff about which we give a fuck.

There is not an emotion we have felt, not an action any of us has taken, not a relationship we have had that someone else has not already had, is having, or will have. That’s why there are books and movies that are familiar, why, at some times in your life, songs you have heard a thousand times are wonderful tunes but in those particular moments, you feel every word of every lyric of even the shittiest of them.

As common as we all are, even considering that we are the lucky ones according to Richard Dawkins - the others, the ones who will never be at all, they “outnumber the sand grains of Arabia” - as lucky and as common as we all are, as common as are all our choices, they are unique merely because they are ours, individually, or ours in a relationship with someone else. When we choose in our unique lives, there is our true power. There is our humanity. Then we are most truly alive.

If you sense there is a story there , you are right. But that’s not a story for everyone. IYKYK. On some stuff in life, even in a place where it seems everyone knows everyone else’s business, only two people know what they gave a fuck about, when they made a choice, when they were alive.

The rest can fuck off.

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The number of people who read Bond Papers is roughly the same number as the peak of the old blog about a decade or so ago. As much as I write for myself all these words about the things I give a fuck about, it’s amazing and it is gratifying to know that these scribbles strike a chord with you.

The number who are on the email list is much smaller than the total readers and a smaller number again are subscribers, people who financially support my work.

Each of them made a choice but the ones who offer financial support make it possible not only for them to have these scribbles but for the rest of you to get them as well, not just now but for as long as this space survives.

They’re the ones who have decided what they give a fuck about. Each is unique. They have their own reasons but their choices have that wider consequence of making this writing available for many more people to find, and get angry about, and think about, and do something about, if they choose.

If you aren’t one of the give-a-fuckers, give a thought about your choice. Add your email address. Click the link below. And when the screen comes up, click one of the amounts that works for you.

Give a fuck.

Make a choice.

Even in a place where it seems everyone knows everyone else’s business, only the people involved will know what you gave a fuck about when you made a choice.

Read on for some other stuff to tickle your brain stem, if you give a fuck.