Do you care about others, or are you trying frantically; impatiently, to get your needs met?
That’s a direct question, isn’t it! I bet your reaction was one of repulsion. I care about people! How dare you!
A reaction such as this is common if you don’t authentically care about people. Caring for people will give you so much proof that you won’t need to respond to this comment, you’ll know that you care.
A curious and caring culture of Being will get you a long way. Reciprocity and service breed the return for you. It might not come immediately or in the same form, yet it will come.
We each have our forms of abundance and aligned action. Today, I was successful in acquiring a carer job; that felt exciting, aligned and abundant to me. I know that this is the next step on my path. I’m enjoying that feeling.
I know that the lessons that I need to learn on my immediate path, lie in wait for me in this job.
Getting a carer job might seem absurd to another person.
If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.
~ Albert Einstein ~
We place too much in idealisation; in the rational knowing mind. Yes, that’s important, yet it’s one part of a whole system. The rational mind is like having a wise adult check over everything you want to do; that is great for longevity because it allows you to work coherently towards a long term goal. It also means that you won’t act on every impulse that you have.
However, it doesn’t always ensure your fulfilment and happiness. Some impulses and desires are beautiful and life-changing.
The desire to serve selflessly.
See, we live in a culture that pretends that it cares about people, when in fact it’s made to perpetuate the cycles of “primitive narcissism” and the demands of the new God; the Market. It’s not the economy’s fault, or even the culture, we got trapped in the ‘doing’ cycle.
The amount of ‘doing’ required to sustain basic levels of prosperity became more and more and more. Until you couldn’t breathe in, in the number of seconds that you got time to relax.
Coming home from work, cooking dinner, winding down, time for bed. Get up and do it all again.
Then, you forgot how to relax.
You forgot what you like to do to relax. Who you are, and what you need. Fine for most of the time, whilst you’re doing, you’re achieving, and you feel good, yet it’s tough to accomplish the more nuanced goals in life from this state. Fulfilment is a soul language, not a ‘doing’ language.
It comes from an emergent voice that’s often only found in the stillness, and it’s soft, it never speaks brashly. It can’t be heard unless you cultivate the space, trust, and respect to listen.
How do you feel about silence? When you’re silent, do you enjoy it, or does it feel oppressive? Is it possible for you?
If you get a moment to relax, do you get swept with a torrent of mental chatter?
That’s enough to put you off relaxation forever, right?
When people say, I relax by going for a run, they might mean the after-effects of the run, but the run itself is ‘doing’, and you exist in the sympathetic response; the stress response.
The sympathetic response is suitable for this very reason; it gets us up and going. It’s not ideal to live in it all the time, though. Balance, in life, is vital.
Similarly, people around you forgot how to relax; the cultural narratives become based around busyness.
“Are you busy?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, that’s good.”
Like busyness will get us all the way to heaven. When, in fact, this is a scarcity mindset. What we’re doing, as a collective, is getting well acquainted with knowing our stressed selves. We know what it means to be stressed out about security, ensuring our safety; voting in authoritarians, but do we know how to be peaceful, happy, emotionally vulnerable, fulfilled?
I’m taking an educated guess that most people shun congratulations, a moment of gratitude, or a vulnerable moment with their lover. Making a joking remark or a mock insult.
Fine, because security is essential and the world does take a lot of effort to exist nowadays. Competitive nature. Flooded job markets. Do you need your job, or do you want it?
People can be inspired, uninspired, or disenfranchised at work. The disenfranchised tend to work actively to deter the other two from doing anything.
How do you return to caring about people; serving people?
It takes space.
It takes time to breathe. Get your nervous system into a coherent and relaxed state. Listening to your body-mind. The messages that come through are always useful interpretations of your life.
When was the last time you went and relaxed on the beach and heard the waves crash uniquely on the shore, sat by a tree and listened to the wind blowing through the leaves and branches, sat on your sofa with a cup of tea and watched the steam whilst you spend time integrating your recent experiences?
When you get to that space of awareness with yourself, you can then bring it into relating.
It’s only possible to take someone as far as you’ve gone yourself. That’s a coaching term, and it’s true for all relationships. Holding space is about recognising and respecting different experiences in the other. Honouring that in dignity, and also allowing it to flow to whatever it needs to flow to next.
That is what I see as care and service.
Our western culture has made us all fixers in the emotional realm. That’s not connection because it’s not empathy. We need to rediscover our feminine energy and nurture each other. That’s the antidote to almost all the ailments of the modern world; connection.
It’s not enough to say love will save us, because love is a complex word that can mean so many things. It’s been bastardised by Hollywood and the advertising industry. Loving images now sell toilet paper and perfume; that’s an incongruent message.
Love is different things to different people.
Connection is crossing the bridge from one person’s experience to another’s. Depending on where people meet each other on this bridge, is how the relationship develops.
A caring nature involves curiosity because questions are so pivotal and vital to empowering a human being. Asking well-placed questions can open up a conversation. Even better if you’re asking what it is a person needs, or how they felt about a particular situation. It builds a picture of a person, and this is the foundation upon which a house can be made. A relationship house.
You can start these habits off slowly by being kind to people who are strangers. Giving the homeless regular attention, or buying them a sandwich, asking your colleague an appropriate question, or starting with a non-conflictive aspect with your partner. All this can help you to build the trust web you need, both with yourself and with others.
I think we often get told that relating is something that comes naturally. Like it’ll be an innate skill that’ll magically appear when you need it. Connecting socially is wired in our DNA, yet relational communication and connection is a practice like anything else. The more you do it, the better you get.
That includes all the mistakes you’ll make on the way. Part of the human experience is to mess up, don’t beat yourself up; learn the lesson and move on.
Do you have a caring and curious nature?
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Previously Published on Medium
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