There once was a farmer who was trying to sell a horse. He put an ad in Craig’s List: Horse for sale, low mileage, no health issues.
The farmer who lived next door, which was some hundred miles away back then, because it was a time before elites were building government funded data centers on Grade ‘A’ agricultural farmland and whining about the potential of global food shortages; well, this rugged good looking farmer came by to investigate the possibility of purchasing the aforementioned horse.
“He looks pretty good,” he said, while groping the horse’s scrotum. “Has he ever been studded?”
“Aye, sadly, no. He’s not been so inclined as to be in the fatherly way, and the mares find him less than appealing,” said the farmer selling the horse.
“His teeth, he seems young and well cared for. Are you sure you want to part with him? There’s a lot of work that could be done with him, and he seems to be of pretty even temper.”
“Oh, yes,” said the older farmer. “The wife and I think he needs a more demanding work environment to keep him occupied throughout life’s challenges.”
“Well,” says the younger farmer, “I am definitely interested, and the price is within my means, but I am a little suspicious of your intentions. Let’s see how he runs.”
The young farmer smacks the horse on the rear end, and the horse takes off running, faster than Secretariat leather made into a baseball and thrown by Joe DiMaggio, but before Marilyn Monroe and that time when he threw his elbow out by winging a whiskey bottle at an unruly passerby.
Secretariat leather surrounding a wound baseball core, thrown by the finest league player of the day. Just imagine it; very fast.
Well, the horse ran full speed for 700 feet and then straight into a tree. A tall and wide oak tree. The tree said nothing, the horse fell over, stunned, landing side-on to the ground. It gave a little moan as it fell, in acknowledgment of its pain and humiliation.
“That horse is blind!” exclaimed the young farmer. “What con are you trying to pull, selling me a blind horse!”
“Oh,” said the older farmer, “he ain’t blind. He just don’t give a fuck.”
How beautiful if, in life, like the horse, we should all not give a fuck? All of our greatest failures could be written off as, I just didn’t give a fuck.
Also, like the wise farmer, we should recognize the behaviors in others when they have reached the point of not giving a fuck. There is nothing they have left to give, and nothing we can say or do that will change their situation.
Be the oak tree. Let those who have nothing left to give break their tired hopeless skulls upon thy trunk, and may it be profoundly biblical. For those who have nothing left to give are useless to me.
Blessed is the word of TikTok.
—DG
Inside Doug's Head 