How does love express itself? Of course, there are so many ways and caring is one of them. When someone comes along side you and simply cares, doesn't that do something special to you? We can express our love for one another by the simple act of caring.
Mr. Gordon has a great perspective on caring that I want to share with you.
He writes:
"Most of us spend our lives trying to escape from self centeredness. Maybe that's the whole point, the whole challenge, what the whole thing is about. Some of us succeed better than others. It seems to me that the ones who have the most success are those who somehow turn self-caring into what might be called other-caring.
It takes courage to be an other-carer, because people who care run the risk of being hurt. It's not easy to let your guard down, open your heart, react with sympathy or compassion or indignation or enthusiasm when usually it's much easier-and sometimes much safer-not to get involved.
But people who take the risk make a tremendous discovery, the more things you care about, and the more intensely you care, the more alive you are.
This capacity for caring can illuminate any relationship, marriage, family, friendship-even the ties of affection often join humans and animals. Each of us is born with some of it, but whether we let it expand or diminish is largely up to us.
To care, you have to surrender the armor of indifference. You have to be willing to act, to make the first move. Once at sunset my small daughter and I were watching the tide come in. It was a quiet evening, calm and opalescent. The waves sent thin sheets of molten gold across the dry sand-closer and closer. Finally, almost like a caress, an arm of the ocean curled around the base of the dune. And my daughter said pensively, "Isn't it wonderful-how much the sea cares for the land?"
She was right, with the infallible instinct of childhood: it was a kind of caring. The land was merely passive-and so it waited. But the sea cared-and so it came. The lesson was all there in that lovely symbol: the willingness to act, to approach, to be absorbed and in absorption - to be fulfilled."
Can you imagine how many people there might be around you who are passively waiting for someone to notice them and to care about them? There may be people living in your own house, maybe a family member, a neighbor, a co-worker. Someone you pass every day, the person who fills your coffee order, the mail man, the UPS person, the person in the office next to you, a secretary, or a person who sits in the same pew as you in church. A person waiting, hoping, day after day, that someone, anyone, might notice them and care.
We have become a race of people focused so much on ourselves that we don't even notice the people around us. Often times we might feel agitated or angry at the very thought of how taking time to care would be a major imposition on us. Too much of life has become about us. If someone else's house were to blow away, it wouldn't be so bad, as long as it was not ours. It is not so bad if things happen to others but they become horrible if they happen to us.
God has touched me with a love for people. What I have learned from taking time to notice people is that no matter what they look like on the outside, they are some very cool people on the inside. People will amaze you if you care enough to give them a chance, if you take time to listen more than you talk. Sitting in coffee houses or fast food eateries, I have been blessed with the opportunity to meet some cool people. Somehow, I must look interested or maybe because I engage them in a greeting, I have sat and heard entire life stories or struggles they happen to be enduring. Two strangers sitting sharing, one listening and caring, the other being partly filled back up where life has taken so much. The only way such encounters happen is when your focus comes off yourself and you open up to other people.
Ponder this thought. When life deals you a bad blow things get tough, right? Have we ever said that life just can't get any worse? Okay, let me offer this; life has gotten tough but what happens if we add "and no one cares" to the end of our tough life story? It somehow gets a lot gloomier and sadder and harder, doesn't it? When things are hard, walking through such times alone makes it even harder.
What if you go through your day and people all around you are sharing stories, hopes and dreams, successes and failures. What if everyone around you always has lunch plans and weekend events to look forward to, what do you feel? Being ignored and overlooked is one big blow that life can deal. In my experience, there is always room for one more lunch companion or one more friend.
It does take courage to make the first move. It does take courage to be transparent and take a chance. It takes great courage to care. Maybe what makes it hard to care about the person you know little about is that we have all felt those ugly feelings that no one cares now and again. Maybe what gets in the way of us taking that chance is that we don't want to be reminded of how it felt to think nobody cares. For us, taking that chance might dredge up those lonely, unhappy feelings again and we would rather just ignore them.
How can we love more? Just care more. Be courageous, take a chance. Stop living life with a focus only on you. Let down your guard, open up your heart and as Mr. Gordon wrote, "the more things you care about, and the more intensely you care, the more alive you are." Caring offers huge dividends - being more and more alive.
You don't have to fix problems. You don't have to have answers. You don't have to live their lives for them. It would just be great if you cared. Trade in being a self-carer for being an other-carer. When you do, who knows what you will discover.