"The opposite of love is not hate. It is apathy."
I am a very passionate person. Attitudes, emotions, belief and perceptions run deep and strong with me. I don't do apathy well. I think the three most destructive words in the English language are, "I don't care".
But I'm trying to learn a new skill recommended by a consensus of my friends. I've named the concept Benevolent Indifference. In other words, a combination of wishing someone well in a generic, impersonal sense without really giving a shit.
The closest picture I can find in my own mind to benevolent indifference is how I feel about the OU Sooners football team. It's almost heresy to say something like this in Oklahoma, but I enjoy the Sooners and wish them well, and I'm on their team when the win. When they lose, oh well. It's just football. It's not like they are doing anything of actual importance. If I had my choice, they'd win all the time. But if they don't, my life goes on unaffected.
I have been told that I should think this way about people and situations that are associated with traumatic or negative events in my past without prejudice as to why those associations exist or what should have happened instead. They say I should do so with an intentional detachment from the people and situations just as I am emotionally detached from the outcome of a damn football game.
"Yeah, but..." says I, "Football really isn't important to me. The 13 years I spent trying to build a successful software business is fundamentally different. It is close to me, and I invested much of who I am in it."
And I realize they are more right than I am. My old business, my old church, my old arch type are all now outside of my circle of influence and for the most part outside of my field of vision. Their fate is in their own hands, and I have long ago released them to their choices and whatever destiny develops because of those choices. But I haven't really detached myself in the same way I am detached from some football team.
I don't have much of a traumatic past to detach from - not nearly as much as others whose stories I know. But I'll give it a try.
Anything is better than cynicism.