The Caring Conundrum

Caring is sharing. Caring is what good and nice people do. We are taught to care. But what does that mean exactly? And to what end? I think caring is great, as long as it is coming from a place of non-attachment. A place where we aren't attached to the outcome, and we don't have grandiose expectations regarding the fruits of our caring. As long as we can care from a place of clarity, then we won't create more karma for ourselves and others. If I pretend to care, but sit there silently in judgement, what kind of karma am I creating? I believe that it's the judgments, aka the emotional charge that we carry, that creates karma. I believe that if we are acting from clarity, and a place of non attachment then we are not racking up charges on the old karma card. 

So the conundrum is to care or not to care? Not exactly. It's to pay attention to what we are caring about and get honest with ourselves about what and why we care. Then we can start assessing th,e cost of caring and see if we can afford it. We may not like what we see at first. But if we can start by not getting down on ourselves while we figure it out, it's a start. And then we can begin to dig ourselves out of any karmic hole we created. 

And if you are a person who cleanly cares, awesome! It's great to see how it's done! It may it look like what we think it should, or it might. Because if a person cleanly cares, there is an element of not caring that goes along with it. A clean care comes with the part that the carer doesn't care what other people think. It takes guts to really care and not care simultaneously. That's the conundrum. Jesus cared so much that he didn't care how many people's feelings he was hurting when he agreed to do the cross thing. Socrates didn't care how many people he left behind when he chose hemlock over life for the sake of his truth. And I believe that when we get really clear, we even lose the attachment to Truth. But that's another story for another day.

Another question. Another conundrum. Another thing to care or not care about. And I do care about caring. I just want to be clear about what I'm caring about.