There's something a bit funny about the idea of "stop caring." I think that, like inconceivable, it probably doesn't mean what we think it means.

In one story, a couple of monks have an encounter with a young lady. She is sometimes cast as merely young and lovely, and sometimes cast as a downright prostitute. Sometimes there's a puddle, and sometimes there's a river. One of the monks is very wrapped up in dogma, and the other is more interested in moving on. Some people say that it is, in fact, a story about moving on. And it certainly could be. It's a good story, though, so it doesn't have to be just about one thing. I think that it's also about caring vs. not-caring. I think that focusing on losing all attachment to the world is sort of like an attachment. Like when you're trying to fall asleep and all you can think about is how hard you're trying to be asleep.

I guess I feel like the same is true for Camus' assertion. "Abandon hope all ye who enter here" isn't going to win any awards for cheeriest greeting card, but there's something to be said for putting your head down and just shoving through. I don't feel like it's a hopeless thing to do, but it's not particularly hopeful either. Maybe it's that I think both Camus and the "stop-caring" recommendation are made from the third dimension to describe something true in the fifth. It's like the blind men who each said with perfect honesty that the same object was most like a rope, a hose, a tree, a fan, a wall, etc. A sighted person walking by would immediately say that the object was most like (and in fact was) an elephant. 

When we say "stop caring" it could conceivably describe a tiny facet of the kind of enlightenment that Buddhism is talking about. But that enlightenment would also contain acts of love, which seem to contradict our understanding of "stop caring." And likewise if we say "give up hope" it might look a little bit like just putting your head down and pushing, because there is no hope involved in that, it's just an act. But then you'd get really confused when that same person who was putting their head down and shoving got some happiness from pausing and taking satisfaction from how much smaller the distance was to their goal.

Since I last wrote I've started a system that is maybe helping with getting things done. And oops, it involves motivation! So I guess we'll see if it lasts? I've got a spreadsheet set up wherein I earn minutes for things I should be doing, which I can spend on things I want to be doing. This has so far had the following benefits: 

1. I am more careful about how I spend the minutes. If I'm spending them, I want to be sure I'm spending them on something I really want to be doing. Internet usage has gone way way down as a consequence. 

2. I like to hoard my minutes. I take a certain amount of cranky pride in having minutes available in the triple digits, and I'm reluctant to use them up. I'm greedy, I guess. 

3. I'm actively looking for things to do to accrue minutes. My kitchen has been more consistently clean, the dining room table has been better, I've been exercising more, and laundry has been getting done in a reasonable amount of time.

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As for expectations of others, I think it often helps too to be able to figure out what you want those others to be to you. I, for example, have a terrible time with people who are between "friend" and "acquaintance." Once I try to befriend someone, if the relationship sort of sags and disintegrates a bit, I don't know how to treat it anymore. How do you interact with someone with whom you no longer quite have a friendship, but who you know better than you know acquaintances? Particularly if you're not interested in putting in the substantial effort it would require to rebuild the friendship? That sounds terrible, but in some cases "rebuilding friendship" looks a lot like becoming equal parts confessor and mountain sage. While I have certainly done my share of enjoying feeling wise, these days I don't much enjoy the role.

My question is not so much "how does one help someone else grow." People are growing all the time. There are innumerable influences on how they do so, and we can't possibly be aware of even a fraction of them. Maybe something we say makes them think about something in a different way, and maybe it's the way we meant, but more likely it's not. I find I have more than enough work just trying to help myself grow, and trying to make sure it's in a direction that isn't choking anyone else's growth out. 

Writing that, it actually sounds a lot like what I do with stories. Once I come up with the idea, the best thing I can do is get out of the way. 

Maybe a better phrase for "stop caring" is "take into account your tendency towards self-influenced bias." But it's not nearly as catchy.