I Don't Care

As a priest-to-be, it is generally accepted that I should care. It's not just the big things, but the little day-to-day things that as a priest (well, okay, as a person) I am meant to care about. Things like where someone went on holiday, and how impressed they were by a concert they went to. It's these little details that make up the tapestry of people's lives.

Of all the people that I should want these details from, I am sure that my wife should be top of the list. Yet, when she gets home from the supermarket and tells me that she had a bit of a funny incident with someone charging her the wrong amount and trying to explain to the person what the problem was, and the person not understanding, and being sent to customer service (come on, please; be honest, you don’t care either)...i just lose the will to live. Dear reader, believe me, I try to care. I ask what people did at the weekend...I make the small talk, but when it comes down to it...I am really not interested. I realise that this makes me a bad person; that the rest of the world is probably deeply concerned about these hundreds of details that make up our humanity, but, for me, its all acting.

I have learnt to pretend to care about these things; sometimes I manage it, sometimes I am convincing (Wow! A new puppy! That is exciting! Are you going to take it to obedience school? It really is cute isn’t it..) other times I can hardly muster up the will to smile.

Sometimes I wonder if everyone is pretending, playing along, following the rules and trying to show an interest, and as such, it makes me very uninclined to to tell people about my life. This seems to make blogging a bit ridiculious; if I don’t care about what anyone else has to say then why should they care about what I have to say? Even as I write that sentence I realise it's not that simple. You see, sometimes reading other people's blogs I laugh out loud, or I find something incredibly touching, or I learn something. All of these things interest me. What someone brought at the supermarket (unless its funny)…well…I don’t care…does anyone? Are you all acting and just doing it better than me, or have I got the bit of me that creates an ability for interest in such things missing?