I remember always being told in my youth that one day you give up your ideals and stop caring about things you can’t change.

I think I may have almost got there.

I’m not sure if I got shallow, or if it’s simply that too much bad stuff happens in the world over the course of three decades and eventually your brain has to decide to blow up, or to cut the bad news out.

We have a major oil spill right bam smack on the beach I was virtually brought up on. And yet, Im out all the time feeling like a nervous wreck over whether our rugby team can score more points than the other team. Every night, my brain tries to ask why I even care, and I push the thought aside and try to pretend that winning a rugby game actually means something.

Because if it doesn’t, then I’ll have to think about the oil spill. And I just don’t want to.

I’ve never been one to join the mass movements. In theory, I back them, but when I come face to face with a bunch of 18 year old spoilt brat kids telling me how hard the have it, I just want to ask them to go find a job like all the people who have actually struggled through life are trying to do. Or actually go overseas where the 99% don’t get free health care, a benefit if they can’t work, a 50% subsidy on their student fees, and the rest given to them interest free for life. Then tell me how hard life is. (In New Zealand, the movement needs to focus more on the 40-60%, and I honestly believe even they, despite feeling the pinch, have no comprehension of the crippling clutches of poverty in other countries).

When Queen Street was taken over by the Youth Of Today telling us how disenfranchised they are, I felt like pointing them to the advertisement on the nearest bus shelter. 3 out of 4 of them are too busy making placards to enrol to vote… And that 2 second act would probably have more national significance than 15 minutes of subjecting the rest of us to their confused and mildly embarrassed chants.

I have spent so much of my life twisted into knots about stuff like this and whether or not I’m even entitled to an opinion, and now I just find myself so tired of it all. I think part of me wants to believe that winning the RWC will somehow equate to us winning all these other battles and inspiring people to aim for something bigger, even though I know it’s totally illogical.

On the upside (?!?!) though, by even writing this, I suppose there’s still something in there that clings to the hope that caring, on it’s own, is a beneficial thing.