"Come to Me in love, in willingness, in hope, in
fear, in despair, in longing.
It is all the same. Just come to Me."
It is all the same. Just come to Me."
The world often seems divided between those who
care and those who don’t care enough, but don’t judge too harshly. It takes
courage to care greatly. It does take courage to care, to fling open your heart
and react with sympathy or compassion or indignation or enthusiasm when it is easier - and sometimes safer -
not to get involved. But people who take the risk, who deliberately discard the
armour of indifference, make a tremendous discovery: the more things you care about, and the more intensely you
care, the more alive you become.
If you look closely at the marvelous tapestry
of living, you will see that the shining thread of caring runs through it all like a streak of golden fire.
Caring or not caring can mean the difference between success and failure in a
marriage, in a job, in every human relationship. “Nothing
great was ever achieved without enthusiasm,” said Emerson. And what is
enthusiasm but passionate caring?
The Bible is full of the importance of caring. The Good
Samaritan is concerned about the victim of the robbers, so he acts. The other
travellers were afraid that if they acted they might get into trouble, “passed
by on the other side.” Conversely, what got the Prodigal Son into trouble was not caring. He didn’t care what he did to himself,
or how his behaviour affected others. But his father cared - and kept on
caring. And this was the salvation of the boy, because when he finally hit
bottom, he knew where to turn. “I will arise,” he said, “and go to my father.” What
the Bible seems to be saying is that if you take this one ingredient out of
life, nothing has much meaning.
Over and over again in our workaday world we see how caring
counts. A famous jeweller once sold a magnificent ruby after one of his
salesmen had failed to interest the customer. Asked how he did it, the jeweller
said, “My assistant is an excellent man, an expert on precious stones. There’s
just one difference between us. He knows jewels - but I love them. I
care what happens to them, and who wears them. The customers sense this. It
makes them want to buy - and they do.”
In such cases, of course, caring ultimately brings tangible reward, but the
great philosophers and religious leaders have always taught this paradox: the most rewarding form of caring is caring without hope of
reward.
Fortunately for mankind, the world is full of people who go
quietly through life performing, as Wordsworth put it, “little,
nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.” The voluntary
worker at the hospital, the neighbour who offers to take care of your children
while you settle into a new house - such people have no ulterior motive and
expect no recompense. They act because they care, and their actions -multiplied
by millions - supply the force that keeps the human race moving upward from
barbarism along the rocky path of evolution.
The capacity for caring is in each of us, but whether we expand it or let it
diminish is largely up to us. It is not always spontaneous. Socrates was
referring to this when he said, “Before a man can move
the world, he must first move himself.” Many great artists have served
long and difficult apprenticeships before they learned to love what they were
doing. Many a person has had to work at a friendship before it became one.
One of the best ways to increase your capacity for caring is to express what
you feel. People always caution: “Check your emotions.” “Control yourself.” “Don’t
give way to your feelings.” But often such emotions are simply signs of caring,
and if we repress them too relentlessly, the capacity for caring itself may be
blunted or damaged.
So work at it: the willingness to act, to approach, to
be absorbed, and in the absorption to be fulfilled…
(Adapted from and all credit to Arthur Gordon)
Take care ~ SB
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