“I Don’t Care”

by Dan Bouchelle

My four-year-old son, Seth, is going to school for the first time. He is in a pre-kindergarten program that marks his first venture out of our house on a regular basis. I worried a little about how he would react to being on his own. Schoolyard social life can be challenging and cruel. Children are neither tactful nor concerned for each other’s feelings. It can be a dog-eat-dog arena. But one thing Seth said last week made me take heart.

We were on our way home from school, and I asked Seth how things were going. He said, “One of the boys came up to me and said that he was more powerful than me. He said he knew karate.”

I asked my son, “What did you say?”

Seth made me proud when he answered, “I told him, ‘I don’t care.’”

Honestly, it could have happened the other way around. A few days later my son was caught telling another child, “I’m more powerful than you.” But that does not keep me from being impressed with that fine response, “I don’t care.”

What if we all felt that way? What if we didn’t care who was the most powerful? What if we didn’t care who was biggest, strongest, fastest, smartest, richest? What if we didn’t feel compelled to prove our equality or superiority in every situation? What if we didn’t have to drop hints about what we have accomplished, what we know, who we know, or what we can do? What if it didn’t make us insecure or defensive to be in the presence of someone genuinely superior to us in a variety of ways? What if we could give thanks for the blessings and abilities of others instead of envying them and trying to outdo them? I like that reply, “I don’t care.” I don’t have to be as powerful as you because I am comfortable with being what God made me.

The disciples of Jesus would have fought among themselves less often if they had had that attitude. Maybe this was part of what Jesus was trying to tell them on the road to Jerusalem. Who is the greatest? You should not care. You should care more about being a servant to others than demonstrating your superiority to them. Maybe we should all take a lesson from a child and learn to say to those who boast of their superiority to us, “I don’t care.”