We were all born without teeth. We didn’t need them, and wouldn’t have asked for them if we knew how. Nobody had told us about fresh corn on the cob yet, so we were happy with breast milk.
Eventually, we got teeth through no fault of our own. A few years later, we lost those teeth. We lost most of them because in life you lose those teeth, a few from accidents or a playground fight.
Whenever we lost a tooth, the Tooth Fairy gave us a gift.
It’s the same with the fuck fairy.
We’re all born without fucks. Just look at a baby — that little bundle of joy gives exactly zero fucks. He’ll cry in front of everybody at the mall, and sit for hours in his own shit. Zero fucks.
As you grew up, though, you got a whole bunch of fucks. Your parents started making you give a fuck about rules. Your classmates made you give a fuck about your looks. Later, dating and work supplied a cornucopia of fucks to give about shit that doesn’t really matter.
But here’s the great part.
You can lose those fucks. Some of them you lose because as we grow up our priorities change. Others we lose as we become more confident with ourselves, or from the accidents and struggles that define us as we grow..
When you lose those fucks, thus reducing your total number of fucks given, the fuck fairy comes and gives you gifts.
She gives you the gifts of focus, motivation and clarity. She grants you the gifts of confidence, moxie and chutzpah. When you waste your energy giving fucks about things that aren’t worth a fuck, it saps your strength and fills you with doubt. When you lack spare fucks to give to anything but the most important things in your life, you can give those few remaining fucks the attention they deserve.
Enterprising people can also become enterprising about losing their fucks. You can cultivate an internal culture of giving a fuck about only the things that really deserve your time, energy and attention. For some folks, that happens when other priorities eclipse the little things. Others create this through martial arts training, or dance, or music. For others it's just an organic result of a life well considered and lived.
Whatever your process for losing fucks has to be, make that process part of your life. Identify what matters most to you and yours, then give all of your fucks to them. Extraneous fucks you can shove under a pillow and smother to death.
You don’t need them anymore.
Jason Brick's novel Wrestling Demons will be available via Not a Pipe Publishing in the spring of 2017. If you'd like more of Jason's writing, get into his Shorts (the short essays he emails out once a week) by signing up HERE.