How to not care enough to actually care PT 1.

A friend wrote me recently lamenting how old friends of ours had changed. Mainly one, who, at one point had been a believer and has changed to an atheist.
My wife encouraged me on the matter saying that, regardless of where I was in my own life, I needed to help my friend, if he needed me.

In relaying to him my thoughts on the matter, I found that the best way for me to deal with things like that, like when people who you know and love believe things that disagree with my beliefs is to just not care.

I don't care if my friend is a rabid atheist. I don't care if a friend is a conservative. I don't care if they're slightly racist. I don't care if they want Donald to win for president. I sometimes struggle with the opinions or lifestyles that people have, sometimes, but only out of an inability to reconcile the things in my mind. It has no bearing, no effect on my friendship with them. So I just don't care.

By not caring, I can forego all the internal dialog and get right to being a friend. I simply do not care.

Another friend of mine spent some time trying to win me over to his way of thinking. Gently, but yet with enough force that it was obvious to me. He, of course, knows that I disagree. Nevertheless he continued to try to do what I think he sincerely meant to be helpful.

This tore me up, from the onset, because I had no intention of ever adopting his particular way of thinking. To me, it was outdated, slightly hypocritical and very obtuse. (His way of thinking about this subject, not him).

So I agonized about it. But then I realized that I just didn't care. I realized that I had it within me to let his ideas pass into my head and then back out again. I could smile and say "I never thought of things that way" and let it go. Just to acknowledge another person's ideas doesn't give them strength over me.

And once again, I realized that I didn't care enough to let it really eat at me.

And when I realized that by not caring what a person believes, it actually freed me up to care about them, I suddenly realized that I had been putting the emphasis of my daily interactions on what other people believed or thought, rather than on them.

Suddenly, I was able to care about them.

I realize that certain beliefs or lifestyles may be threatening to you or to your own beliefs or lifestyles. I know that some may just be concerned for dear old friends who have changed a lot.
No matter what, the best and most efficient way to be a super friend, is to just not care and get right on to caring for them.