My fantasy, many days, is to not be vegan and love plastic and love polluting and to not give a care about politics, sexism, racism or war…to just not care. It must be so…peaceful. So nice not to be dismayed by political gridlock over homelessness, or policing. So easy to order off menus where I can just get anything. So nice to not give a care about Nature or this Earth as I travel in my carbon-heavy ways to go enjoy it. So nice to drink shipped-water in single-use plastic. So nice not to know or care about what biodegradable vs. compostable is and why PLA is barely better than plastic.

Instead, I walk around having my heart pricked by so many things—by beauty, but cruelty, by caring, by folks idling in their cars, by the plastic floss things littered everywhere.

“Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.”

~ Chögyam Trungpa

A Manifesto for Caring.

Why the whole “No F*cks Given” ethos is Fun…but Dead Wrong.

Giving a care is annoying, and occasionally exhausting, but often fulfilling.

And you know what’s more annoying than keeping our hearts open, even when they get irritated or hurt?

Not caring.

There’s no bathrooms for public use in Amazon.

There’s “no business to be done on a dead planet.”

Accountability is not a sign that you’re a bad person, but a mature adult. Avoiding plastic is a pain in the arse but an ocean-ful, or bear or bird or whale-ful of plastic sucks. Anti-racism or, say, Veganism isn’t “woke,” it’s about caring. Only Narcissists call themselves Empaths while failing to vote or work toward solutions toward, say, both public safety and our homeless communities.

News Alert: I get it. It’s fun to “Give no Fucks, Take no Shit.” But I have come before you today to say that yes, I, Waylon Lewis, brought up by a school teacher, along with billions of nurses and good humans of all stripes, do Give Many Fucks, and are willing to Take some Shit, if by that we mean, apologizing when appropriate, and owning it, not just owning things, and, you know, that old-fashioned value folks today call “Accountability.”

Let’s stop normalizing, say, torturing moms then killing them in middle-age after we’ve kept them pregnant, forcibly (you know, rape) while stealing their children, putting them in unheated/uncooled plastic pens then killed at a few weeks old just so we can steal momma’s milk…the justification being that we’ve normalized all that and we don’t care about animals pain, death, and suffering because of some half-baked “cycle of life” bullshit.

I’m tired of caring that plastic balloons are fun for an hour then eff up animals and oceans and I’m tired of caring enough to sort compostable separate from trash or, say, to get off the eco vegan stuff (you know, caring about our climate crisis gets so old so fast, saving the world is for Tom Cruise movies, not reality), that racism is unlearned and we have to actively unlearn it, even if “we aren’t racist” we’re living in a racist-influenced society and admitting that is the first step toward rectifying it.

I’m tired of caring but the alternative is being an asshole, if only indirectly and passively (many assholes are genuinely nice people). Only narcissists call themselves Empaths but actively don’t care about folks outside of their gated communities.

I’m tired of caring but I don’t mind being called woke or a social justice warrior or any of that BS because those terms just point to the accuser’s inability to imagine a cause other than narcissism because they don’t feel empathy, you know, caring, for, you know, others. So maybe just maybe being a meditating cycling zero-waste anti-racist democracy-loving peace-on-earth cherishing vegan weirdo isn’t about me thinking I’m perfect or needing to see the chicken’s papers but is about me caring wherever I can give a care, in a world, on a planet, that desperately needs me and you and all of us to give a care. Hell the whole Front Range of Colorado, big cities, just stopped composting 50% of stuff (restaurants all going back to plastic) because folks couldn’t be bothered not to toss it all in the wrong bin. Hell we’re killing more animals every day after torturing them than all the humans on the planet. Hell we’re cooking and breaking our entire world because we can’t be bothered to take a bus or shop secondhand or stop it with the single-use plastic or stop flying everywhere or heating our homes with gas or oil or driving pretty trucks as big as the hole in our hearts. And only those obsessed with, you know, caring, think twice before putting more babies into this beautiful, magical, fragile, powerful world we’re breaking over our knee casually, every day, because we don’t care.

So yeah, you needn’t give a f*ck about brash sexist uncaring slobs who talk over you. But we all need to give a care about ourselves, and this life, and this world, and this planet of ours—and one another.

So yeah I’m gonna skip Starbucks and cow’s milk next time in Paris. I’m not traveling half the world just to check out a slightly different version of The Man, whether it’s McDonald’s or Starbucks or Eiffel trinkets made out of plastic in China. After all, as they say back home, there’s no bathrooms for public use in Amazon.