GAF

I need a Latin translator. Can anyone help me? I need to know how to say “Give a Fuck” in Latin. I need to know in the impossible event that I’m ever elected pope. It would be my motto. 

I’ll call it GAF for short. Sometimes it seems like nobody Gs AF about anyone or anything anymore. We adopt this jaded, ironic, cowardly emotional distance from people and things. Who can blame us? We’re bombarded with information, decisions, communications, stimuli. Every new thing produced by journalism has to appeal to our shock factor more than the last piece. Over time, we become numbed to it all. 

I noticed it yesterday. When I started my car, the Bluetooth from my phone immediately started playing the daily Mass readings from a podcast. Without thinking, I turned it off immediately. Being honest with myself, I realized that, in that moment, I could not GAF about the Word of God. How many people died to uphold the faith held in those words, and here I was tossing it away like garbage. It was just too much. 

Recently I did GAF. When I was in church on Sunday, I thought about my Uncle Patrick who died after trying to kill himself, which was more than ten years ago, and suddenly I began to cry. What was that feeling in my chest? What was that moisture in my eye? Could it be that I was giving a fuck? Yes, I was. I was sad. I was angry. “I have to say, Uncle Pat, I give a fuck about you. It makes me angry to think about what happened to you or that no one cares. It makes me angry that no one talks about you anymore. No one seems to think about you or miss you. No one seems to care that you ever existed. I give a fuck about you, man. And I don’t know what to do about my giving a fuck, but right now I’ll just kneel in this pew and cry.”

It was a strange, hard feeling. Giving a fuck is hard work.

So please, Lord, be patient with me as my hard heart softens and relearns how to GAF.