Back again to my favorite, non-favorite essay, Montaigne’s take on war horses.

I’ve covered this essay in a number of ways — by analogy, by absurdist humor, by discussions of the TV show “Mr. Ed.” Actually, I just made that last one up. I do remember watching “Mr. Ed” as a kid, but I don’t remember enough about it to take up a full essay and have no interest in refreshing my memory on it.

I think I’ll take an entirely new route this time by declaring that it’s ok to not care about some things. And for me, the list of topics that I don’t care about is surprisingly long, given that I like to consider myself a well read, well informed person. But I really see no reason to keep up with much of what’s going on in the culture. I have never had a Tik-Tok account and have no desire to dip into that pond. I’ve seen nearly 3000 movies in my lifetime, but many of the most popular movies of the last 20 years I’ve ignored until now and will likely keep ignoring.

I even extend this non-caring to my professional life. I do not need to know the minutiae of the organization I work for — I’m only required to know about the things that inform what I work on. Now, it’s true that the entire span of the organization could potentially become a topic for speeches at any time, but that’s fine, I can catch up on what I need to know when I need to know it. I don’t need to soak it all in — and I won’t because I find much of it really boring.

This extends to people news and information as well. I have a huge extended family (and it was monstrously larger when I was married) and it’s nearly impossible for me to keep track of all the cousins, second cousins and in-laws in my universe. So, I don’t try. I try to know enough that I could ask or when I hear about people in conversation.

But this comes back to something a therapist once observed about me — that I really have no interest in discussing other people. He said that most people come into therapy with stories about other people and the inter-personal dynamics causing them stress. I never did that, anything I brought into the room was about myself and my reactions to things. And I also never really got engaged in a conversation unless it was about ideas.

I think this is a big reason why I’ve never written fiction. I have read all kinds of different novels, including some with sprawling casts of characters. To be honest, I mostly tolerate them. Quietly, I’m annoyed that the author is introducing me to yet another side character. Whether this character moves along the plot is not a big concern of mine, since I mostly don’t care about plot. I’m just bothered that the focus has left the people I’m paying attention to and am trying to figure out. These other people, in my mind, are just a distraction.

And I know that quite a bit of fiction does focus on just a character or two. Some of them I like quite a bit. But at times these books annoy me too, because what they take away in extraneous characters they make up with stupefying descriptions about every day objects that I feel are better left to poetry. I don’t want to read a book where a character describes the experience of sitting down in a chair for ten pages.

Not caring is an important aspect of life, just as important as caring. We develop taste not only by figuring out what we like, but also what disinterests us. Learning how to respectfully manage things we don’t care about is part of being an adult as well. We have to navigate our way through dull meetings that we cannot understand why we’re part of them.

And we need to figure out yet another way through the “War Horses” essay.