The world spends a lot of time trying to make me feel bad about something that I don’t control. Corporations are stealing from workers. Billionaires seem to be bent on destroying the economy even more. Children starve and are abused. Nations are engaged in terrible cruel wars. Our chief executive is a babbling autocrat and sexual abuser who spent most of his life perpetuating fraud schemes on people who seem too stupid to survive. Look! This puppy was so neglected his eyes were glued shut with gummy discharge and he lost all four paws. You know how it goes.

I looked up the phrase, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention,” and apparently nobody knows the exact origin or correct phrasing of the sentiment, but it’s been around a long time.

Here’s the thing, though; the phrase suggests that outrage is innately virtuous, and that paying attention is also virtuous, and that both activities will result in fixing things. But that way lies the viral “Karen” phenomenon, where private citizens decide to (a) pay attention to something and (b) be outraged and (c) try to fix the problem, all in a profoundly hateful and busybodyish manner, and all while being female and white and (usually) racist. The ubiquity of phone cameras and the appetite of people for disapproving of someone else (that it’s safe to disapprove of) spreads the phenomenon far and wide.

I’m not saying I should bury my head in the sand, or pretend there was a remote time (usually the 1950s) when everything was nice and people were kind, because I was there, and everything wasn’t nice or kind. In fact, it was pretty terrible, and the food was awful.

No, I would characterize myself as a do-gooder. I believe “you can’t keep it if you don’t give it away” at a basic level. My career as a teacher was spent making a difference, every day. I donate money to organizations and people (if I think it will help). I participate in protest activities (if I think they will be effective). I’m a helper. I’m the woman who tries to help someone up who fell on the bus (day before yesterday), or who tells a man full of road rage to get back in his car instead of attacking the old man crossing in front of him who’s taking too long and is being rude. (True. I said, “Behave yourself. Get back in your car,” and he did, which was weird)

But I don’t buy the idea that I should always be upset and full of despair about the whole world. I am not Atlas, to bear the globe on my shoulders. And I already have enough to worry about, thank you. I have a quota of worry, but it’s already full, and it’s only January 2.