The Perils of Nonchalance—And Why Giving a Damn Is Cool

The world needs more people who care deeply

Over the past few months, there’s been increasing discussion about the “epidemic of nonchalance.” It describes a widespread attitude of checking out, of being too cool to care. It manifests in work, relationships, sport, creativity, and pretty much every other area of life.

People suggest all manner of reasons for their nonchalance. The world is chaotic. The pace of life is overwhelming. What’s the point of trying in a broken system. The planet is burning. And on, and on, and on.

No doubt, each of these points has merit. Yes, life is hard. Yes, our times are trying. The system is nowhere close to perfect. But that’s all the more reason to give a damn, to create and contribute.

The real reason most people embrace an attitude of nonchalance is because they lack the courage to care.

Maybe the person you ask out says no. Maybe nobody likes your writing. Maybe you lose the game. Maybe the cause to which you are devoting yourself fails. Maybe someone even laughs at you. When you care deeply you make yourself vulnerable. You risk embarrassment. You risk failure. You no longer have the excuse of Well, I wasn’t trying my hardest or It doesn’t actually matter.

The Courage to Care

Everyone remembers the kid in school who was too cool to try. Maybe that kid was even you. In reality, that kid lived in a combination of insecurity and fear. It was easier not to care than to care and face potential failure. Many adults have yet to outgrow this tendency.

An attitude of nonchalance is like going through life with bubble wrap on:

You make yourself safe by coasting or phoning it in, by not giving it your all. You protect yourself from scratches and bruises, but you never grow into who you really are—let alone express your true potential.

Nonchalance manifests itself in more subtle ways too:

It’s the person who is scared to fail as an artist so they act like they don’t care and take the corporate job. It’s the person who tries so hard to be a cool hipster when what they really are is a total nerd.

The common thread in all these instances is fear of exposing yourself and coming up short. Sometimes things work out. Sometimes they don’t. But if you want to get the best out of yourself then you have to make yourself vulnerable. You have to care. There is no way around it. It’s the cost of admission to a big and interesting life.

The best athletes care deeply.
The best artists care deeply.
The best leaders care deeply.
The best coaches care deeply.
The best teachers care deeply.
The best healers care deeply.
The best parents care deeply.
The best lovers care deeply.

You are not going to be the best anything with an attitude of nonchalance—including the best version of yourself.

Quality Requires Caring

One of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite books, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, involves the narrator Robert Pirsig taking his bike into a new shop for a simple repair.

The staff at the shop were “clowning around and talking and seemed not to notice me,” writes Pirsig. When they finally realized he was there, it didn’t take more than a few minutes for the mechanics to diagnose the issue as the tappets, a small component in the engine.

The only problem is that it was a misdiagnosis. Their work made everything worse. Pirsig had to take his bike back multiple times before he finally just gave up and decided to fix it himself.

“Why did they butcher it so?” he ponders of the failed repairs. “There was nothing personal in it… The biggest clue seemed to be their expressions. They were hard to explain. Good natured, friendly, easygoing—and uninvolved. They were like spectators. You had the feeling they just wandered in there themselves and someone handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job. No saying, ‘I am a mechanic.’”

Nothing personal in it. Uninvolved. Like spectators.

In other words, nonchalant.

The concept at the heart of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is “Quality,” a relationship that occurs when someone cares deeply about what they are doing, when subject and object, actor and act, become hard to separate. A quality process produces a quality outcome—whether it’s fixing a bike, training for a marathon, being in a relationship, writing an essay, making art, or leading a team.

A quality process also produces a quality life.

If you want to get intimate with what you are doing and feel alive and full of purpose then you’ve got to care.

Stepping into the Arena

It’s easy to sit on the sidelines. To pretend you don’t care about the thing. To think about the thing. Research the thing. Listen to podcasts on the thing. Talk about the thing. Perhaps even dream about the thing. But these are all just ways of protecting yourself from actually doing the thing.

Eventually, you’ve got to get over it and do the thing.

The way to overcome nonchalance is to recognize it’s primary causes—fear, doubt, insecurity. Then, it is to recognize that these feelings are part of human nature, and to take them along for the ride.

You can either try to protect yourself by going through the motions and being superficially cool (but actually boring). Or you can step into the arena, lay it on the line, care deeply, make yourself vulnerable, and fully live your one and only life.

How do you care deeply in a way that is sustainable? How do you make yourself vulnerable without it becoming overwhelming or burning yourself out?

You set boundaries. You maintain a sense of humor. You surround yourself with good art, good books, and most of all, good people. They remind you that caring is hard but worth it, and they offer crucial support on your path. You cultivate a sense of self that is larger than your ego, larger than the part of you who wants everything to go a certain way. You hold your care, ambition, and drive in a container of self-kindness, because if you cannot be kind to yourself when you suffer inevitable heartbreaks and failures, then you would never come back and risk putting it on the line again. You learn to tell yourself: Caring deeply is hard, but worth it.

Enough with all the nonchalance. There’s nothing cool about it.

The world doesn’t need more people who are going through the motions. What the world needs is more people who give a damn, who have the courage to care.