Dylan's "Things Have Changed": For and Against Apathy

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~ Krzysztof and Dale

Consider Dylan’s ostensible case for apathy:

Turning your back on your own life is a popular strategy, a “see if I care” anti-rallying cry.

Apathy is seductive because it helps wounds sting less. So when Dylan sings slyly “I used to care, but things have changed” he’s helping us remember how easy it is to “wait on the last train” out of our life’s difficulties. Sometimes feeling less pain is an intelligent strategy; it certainly sounds good the way Dylan sings it.

But apathy’s destination is not without its own life-shaping stings and burrs. Often numbness and nihilism follow like shadows at high noon, hijacking our ability to care not only about our problems and difficulties but also about the people and places and daily comings and goings that are our lives. And if we let go of those, what’s left over?

A worried mind seeks shelter— and apathy appears as a shelter that’s safe enough.

Stay too long, though, and the numbness will encourage you to seek excitement just to feel something: “Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet/Putting her in a wheelbarrow and wheeling her down the street.”

There’s a counterpoint worth considering. “People are crazy and times are strange”— how many of us have not been muttering these words to ourselves over the last, oh, ten years, “standing on the gallows with my head in a noose/ Any minute I’m expecting all hell to break loose”?

Dylan’s double-meaning here is worth considering carefully: should we still care about what we used to care about when what we used to care about is no longer the same —things have changed — and is no longer of value? What happens when we stay the same, but the world around us has changed as it is wont to do? Is it a grave sin to re-evaluate what still matters to us? What if what used to bring us nourishment now only brings us pain?

Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much
You can’t win with a losing hand

Zen’s Daoistic roots remind us not to force what doesn’t want to be forced. We used to care about something; nay, we might even have been defined by it. But we, too, have now changed what we care about and can begin to see that we no longer want any part of a losing hand, a raw deal—

Mr. Jinx and Miss Lucy, they jumped in the lake
I’m not that eager to make a mistake
People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

What’s your range, now? What should you be doing instead now that you’ve been changed by the things that themselves have changed?

What’s your mistake? Not caring. But also: caring too much about something that’s best left behind.

Want more Dylan? Listen to our conversation with Zen and Dylan scholar Steven Heine: