The Whatever Trend

 

Recently, I’ve been hearing a lot of “I don’t care."

I've also been hearing a lot of “whatever."



To me, both of these phrases communicate the same thing: “Pshhh! I’m too strong to let anything get to me.”

As I’ve heard these phrases more and more, I’ve started to wonder: How often do we really mean “I don’t care” or “whatever” and how often do we say it even when we don’t mean it? Part of me had this hunch and I wanted to see if I was on to something so I started doing some research. I asked random friends, coworkers and students that same question:

How often do you think you really mean “I don’t care” and how often do you say it when, really deep down, you don’t mean it?



Submitted by one of my students hours before this post was published.

Now I’m an English teacher, not a math teacher, so my statistics are far from perfect; however, I will say this, every time a person thought about the times he/she said “I don’t care” or “whatever” in the last week, often it was a circumstance where he/she REALLY did care!

You see, this was my hunch: Almost every time we say “I don’t care” or “whatever” we really don’t mean it otherwise we wouldn’t go to the efforts of verbalizing it. In other words, when we care enough to say “I don’t care” it’s usually a good indicator that we really do care! Then there are other times when we think we don’t care until it comes down to acting on our “I don’t care”.

Example: A husband and wife are deciding what to eat for dinner.

Husband: “Where do you want to go for dinner?”

Wife: “I don’t care.”

 

Husband: “Buffalo Wild Wings it is!”

Wife: “Really?! I don’t feel like there!”

Husband: “But I thought you said you don’t care!”

OR
 

Example: A friend tells you something insulting; something that strikes a chord with you as a person. You try and tell yourself that you don’t care. You tell yourself that that “friend” really doesn’t know you… but when you are honest with yourself, you know the friend does know you and what he/she said really does hurt. Yes, you really do care.

We tell ourselves all the time to not care, just be tough. Sticks and stones can break our bones but words can never hurt us! -à The ultimate “whatever” speech. But what if we care more than we want to admit?... or we care but just don’t know it?

As I have noticed this “whatever” trend gain momentum, I’ve noticed that we don’t know what we care about and what we don’t care about. We don’t know what or who we love (other than ourselves) and we don’t have a passion for anything.

We just don’t care… or do we?

I think I’m going to try something different for the next week. I’m going to take “I don’t care” and “whatever” out of my vocabulary. Instead, I’m going to work on saying “I DO care”…

I would love to hear your thoughts on the “whatever” trend…  Do you think my hunch is right or off base? Do you recognize some of the “I don’t care” in yourself?

I would love to hear!