Learning to Be a Stoic: Don’t Cares

I was a freshman electrical engineering student when I was introduced to the Karnaugh map in my digital logic class. It is a method of reasoning out the decision logic for a digital circuit design by using Boolean algebra.

While I never entered the world of digital design, I did take away a rudimentary idea of what Karnaugh Maps is, how it is used, and most importantly, I was introduced to the idea of “Don’t Care” cells.

“Don’t Care” cells are the outputs to a logical circuit that has no effect on the overall problem solution, so that you really “Don’t Care” what the result is. You mark that cell with a capital D and you move on to the meat of the digital logic design. It makes designing so much simpler and relieves a lot of unnecessary work. The simpler work and alleviating of extra work definitely appealed to this lazy freshman.

The “Don’t Care” idea stuck with me for some reason, I guess the elegance and simplicity of the idea appealed to me so much that my mind grasped it and held on to it as a guiding light to the rest of my life, pretty soon I found myself saying “Don’t Care” to things that have no impact on me; that is, I extrapolated the digital logic lesson to the rest of my life. Freshmen engineering students will do that.

It was a great filter for me to apply to sorting through all the different decisions, events, issues, distractions and assorted nonsense that came through my life. By saying “Don’t Care” I was able to focus on what I was interested in and what I knew to be important for my future work as well as my future life.

It soon became a dominant mindset that allowed me to be more efficient and effective. I no longer dwelled on those things I felt I didn’t care about.

Unfortunately, this mindset can also backfire on you and make you realize that, indeed, you should care about certain things. It was good seasoning and great lessons in learning to make decisions and being careful when you do triage on the things that life throws at you.

In time, this mindset evolved into a reasonable facsimile of the Stoic’s dichotomy of control. Those things I have no control over are thrown into the “Don’t Care” pile, and I don’t worry about them. I am thinking now that this is a reason that the dichotomy of control was so easy for me to accept out of all the Stoic practices, because it fit so well within my natural preferences regarding my decision making and outlook on life. This unintentional attitude was serendipity blessing me with great wisdom even though I was ignorant of its impact on my life. Or it may just be a coalescing of fate. Not quite sure which it is.