Why do we care?

The clocks go back tonight, so time is on my mind.

I wrote recently about minutae. Why do we care so much about minutae? For example, I have a nature strip and I care about how it looks. I cut it with shears (very tiring, but satisfying) and have investigated replacing it with creeping thyme or just killing the current 'grass' (aka 'weeds') and installing some instant lawn. My preferred variety is Santa Ana in case you were wondering. Add up researching lawn mowers and lawn mowing substitutes, lawn care, planting options etc and I suspect I've given a week of my life to this issue over the past six months or so.

Why is it so? Why do I care? I doubt it adds to my property values. If I were selling or renting I'd pay a Jim's Mowing man to deal with it and that would be the end of it. I don't worry about the neighbors: it's not that kind of area, and I just don't much care what they think. No visitor has ever remarked upon the state of my nature strip.

In the end, I think I like grass and this is the only patch of it that falls under my sphere of control. Amateur psychologists may find other reasons why.

There are many less obvious tasks we all do because we care - although why we care is a mystery when you consider it consciously. I suggest we waste a little more time investigating why we care. It may just be a matter of out-of-date programming, with the potential to save us minutes, hours, days, weeks and even - eventually - years. Time we can spend on something or someone we really care about.