No One Cares as Much as You

I have written three books. Their working titles are Caissa's Pawn, James Hawthorne is Missing, and The Courage of Quiet.  None of them have been published, but the first two are complete and Caissa's Pawn has even been submitted to various agents. I spent a lot of time and energy writing each one. I am proud of these even if they never leave manuscript form. They represent my ambition, love, hope, and longing. I hope they also represent good writing.

At various times I have asked people for feedback on my writing. I chose people who were both kind and critical. I sent them my scripts attached to emails where I said things like, "This is important to me and I value your feedback." Then I waited.

The next time I saw them I heard, "I've been meaning to get to that, but I've been so busy." Next there would be an apology and a promise, "I'm sorry. I'll get to it in a couple of weeks when things are a little more calm." Eventually I was afraid to ask if they even remembered agreeing to read my book because I was afraid that they had read it but could not come up with anything positive to say about it and were hoping that I would simply forget the matter.

While these experiences are hurtful, I don't fault those people who are still sitting on manuscripts that long-ago became outdated by more recent drafts, because I'm sure I have done the same thing to other people. I have friends and family who are involved in plays and musicals, who dance, tell stories, sing, play instruments, make videos, cook, have children, need help moving, paint, build, or like myself, write. They have poured themselves into these things. At times the activity even became fused with their very identity, that if I were to ignore this aspect of their lives I might as well be ignoring the entire person. And that is exactly what I have done, telling myself, "Life is so busy right now. I'll go to the next performance/concert/time they need my help."

The fact is, what is important to you is almost never as important to other people. We want it to be. We struggle to understand how it could not be. We are baffled when they return our enthusiasm with a polite nod. At the same time they have things they care about with the same level of zealotry and they don't understand how we can live a life so calloused to this thing that is so important to making life worthwhile.

The question is (if we want to be a good friend), "How can we learn to care about things that we don't care about?" The answer is that we don't need to. We don't need to become experts in subjects that are inherently uninteresting to us. We only need to be mildly curious. All we have to do is ask a few questions. People love to talk about their passions and when we let them we may learn something. If nothing else, it is always inspiring to listen to someone who genuinely cares about what they're talking about. However, we do need to show up and support those people we care about. Not every time, but every time we can. This will mean sacrificing time and energy. But doing things for other people is what really makes life worth living.