Frankly my dear, I could not give a damn/fuck
After battling the worst case of writer’s block known to mankind (hyperbole much!) I finally had two chapters of my latest work ready to be revealed to eyes other than mine. So I approached my best friend and worst critic, a person who knows so many of my secrets that if he opened his mouth I’d land in jail for murder (his) and asked him to give me his opinion. Hmm, he could blackmail me with impunity come to think of it.
Note : This happened a couple of months ago.
Note 2 : This is what happens when you try to get free critiques done.
His opinion: (given yesterday) You use too much profanity
I sulked for one whole minute. I kid you not; I spent one whole minute that I will never get again sulking because I asked for an opinion and got it. All I could think of the work I’d done on areas like subtle characterization, the tension created, the events which must happen at breakneck speed to keep a reader hooked and he could not overlook a couple of “fuck this” and “oh shit” in my first draft?
And then I laughed. “Coming from a man who has mastered the art of using bhenchod at just the proper place to give emphasis, that’s rich,” I told him.
“I give zero fucks, damn you,” he said irritably.
Well, neither do I. In my life I’ve tried to be a people pleaser and it’s made me very unhappy.
It’s also significantly impacted my growth as a person, and that’s very important to me. More important that a slice of cheese cake or my annual increment, and that is saying something! So, now I give zero fucks. But giving zero fucks (hereintofore referred to as ZFs) is an art.
To give ZFs about something, you have to give many fucks about something better, more important to you. It’s easy to hide behind a wall of indifference, but that’s so cowardly. And it impacts growth. So I give ZFs about the opinion of my awful aunt, but instead I give plenty of fucks about significant things like friends, family, purpose. They’re very important to me. Strangely, it makes me different. But then I’m very comfortable with being different.
Disregard the demon called Opinions-Of-People. What people think about you is their business, not yours. I give ZFs about that unimportant shit. Eric Hoffer once wrote: “A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.” In short, their opinion is not fuckworthy at all.
True wisdom is in knowing that fucks don’t grow on trees. So we’ve got to be careful about issues to give fucks about. And it differs from person to person. I give a whole lot of fucks on stuff like Liberty, Equality, Right to Dissent and such like. I give ZFs about the number of likes on a pouty profile picture of a nubile young lovely girl with an enviable cleavage. I also give ZFs about the dance off between an Entrepreneur-cum-Yoga Master and a Movie Star.
Statutory warning: Be careful where and how you allot your fucks. Giving fucks about anything requires a whole lot of time and energy. An aging hippie and writer like me has to be careful about where to give a fuck and where not to. And that my friend is where maturity comes in.
Dear friend, I give plenty of fucks about you. You said I could not write something profound and mature with a lot of profanities. I was laughing too hard to reply, but I felt challenged. When you said I could not write a whole book peppered with fucks and I asked, “Wanna bet on it?” I bet you did not expect a whole blog post. The book follows.
Picture abhi baaki hai mere dost
