The Power of "Fuck It"

Note: Some of my good friends don’t like cuss words, so I gave some thought to whether I should use the f-word in this post. There are alternatives--screw it, to hell with it, etc. But the desperation one feels at those moments—it’s intense—demanded the one word with enough good old Germanic oomph to get the point across with precision and force. Hence….

I don’t remember what exactly I had, illness-wise—it was senior year of college, after all—but it involved a lot of sniveling and whining and general misery. For days. And then more days. I couldn’t get myself to go anywhere or do anything. I just…sniveled.

Then one day I’d had enough. I sprang off my bed and started throwing things. (Pillows, mostly.) I swore and yelled and generally expressed every bit of anger with this never-ending blech.

After my fury had spent itself, I felt better. The illness had subsided. My health returned.

I’d had a “fuck it” moment—in which my deepest layers said, “Fuck it. I’ve had it with the suffering. I am so over this.” It inspired me to take action, and the action bore fruit.

I thought about this episode while reading one of the healing stories in the Christian gospel of Matthew (9:18-26). A synagogue leader asked Jesus to revive his daughter, who had just died. As Jesus walked toward his house, a woman who’d hemorrhaged for 12 years (presumably like having your period nonstop for over a decade—YIKES) touched Jesus’ cloak thinking that would cure her.

After pondering these stories a minute, I realized they had something in common. Opposition to Jesus among powerful religious authorities was fierce, so it took courage for the synagogue leader to step out publicly and ask him for a favor. Meanwhile, the woman who needed healing would have been considered ritually unclean and therefore shouldn’t have touched anyone (Leviticus 15:19-33). It took courage to reach out and touch this itinerant teacher.

Well it sorta took courage. Look closer, though, and you’ll see a greater motivator behind the courage: desperation.

The leader is desperate to get his daughter back. The woman is desperate to be rid of this life-sapping hemorrhage. I was desperate to get over my own illness, which had reduced me to sniveling.

And we all, in our own way, said “fuck it” and reached out.

To put it succinctly, “fuck it” is the cauldron in which the fuel of desperation becomes the fire of courage. Courage gets a lot of press; desperation deserves more, and so does the catalyst that turns one into the other.

I’ll bet you’ve had these moments, these situations. Feel free to share if you’re so inclined.
 

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