Do You Care or Curse?

Do You Care or Curse?

Ultimately, that is the choice we make with our feelings hundreds of times a day-care or curse? The difference between the two often means happiness inside or despotic misery. The choice is real, most of the time automatic and situational, but once you begin to pay attention to your feelings and thoughts you will begin to realize that yes you do make one of the choices.

Interestingly, our natural proclivity is to care. You learn how to curse a situation. Watch the natural choices of a mother in the animal kingdom and you will see an innate caring instinct. But, for survival purposes that mother teaches her young how to curse, or become a predator, in the wild. Humans, who have the added faculty of intelligence, make the same choice-we learn how to curse certain situations based on feelings.

But, human choice to curse is usually made under the guise of the same notion of protection found in the animal kingdom. But, this is wrong. We learn to curse the unknown or what we fear, curse each other as competitors, damn those who are different, curse obstacles that come into our lives as an impediment which was dumped into our lap to make our lives difficult.

The natural human choice is to care. In spite of how often we are bombarded with instances where the volume of cursing is turned up to shrieking noise, caring still happens. Three four and five year old girls decided to sell their own drawings which they made with crayon and color markers to help the tsunami victims in Japan two days ago.

Why did they do it, they cared. A high school baseball coach donated a kidney to one of his players. He did it, in his words, “because I cared.” A young man stops to help an elderly couple after an accident-he cared too. Teachers teach because they care. Doctors and nurses save lives because they care. Daycare workers care. Architects care about the safety of a structure. Fathers care about their children. When you listen to someone without judgment, you care.

Those who curse care too, but in an inverted way. People who curse measure their care based on past memories of pain which them provokes them to shield caring in a cloak of bitter internalized nonchalance. But, the caring is there not far from the surface if you studied the air of a grumbling curmudgeon. Reasonably, this is true because it is natural to care. So, even though someone exhibits a hardened shell that looks like they curse the world, a persistent dose of caring attention will usually soften their seemingly bitter heart. They too have happiness inside and a caring sensitivity toward others.

This is not a sentimental musing. Honestly, it is not. F. W. Sears writes, “when w permit ourselves to condemn a thing because we say it is “bad” or condemn some person for any cause whatever, that is taking a destructive attitude toward that thing or person no matter how just we may think our position in the case may be we cannot relate with these negative, destructive currents in our thought world and expect constructive and harmonious effects….”

Make it a practice to care about the bitter and downtrodden, lots of people do. Pause for a moment to pick out caring moments that others do. Just last week I watched this new show, Secret Millionaire, on ABC. The tagline is giving back never fet soo good." The premise of the show, from its premiere episode, is for millionaires to live undercover, where others do not know they are wealthy, and spend time in the community with people who are serving are caring for others and then give a portion of their money away to strengthen the work those caring servants are doing which benefit others. On the premiere episode a woman, Dani Johnson, who was once homeless but became a millionaire, spent time in a food kitchen where two elderly twin ladies prepared hot food for those in the community who needed a hot meal. For the housebound, their volunteers visited with them when they took them their meals; what they did was care because often the visit was more healing than the food. Another lady on the show devoted her time, talent and money decorating rooms and granting wishes for children who were very sick. Even though she was a busy mother and wife, it was her calling to care to decorate these rooms with bright and cheerful motifs to uplift the spirits of the ill child and their devastated parents. The millionaire funded both of these causes with a gift of a check, but as importantly she connected to her heart of care.

You may not be a millionaire, neither am I, but what we do share is a willingness to care. Care just a little more about your neighbor, check in on someone who is sick or elderly, send a card you have not seen or talked to in a while, smile, show your happiness inside.

The main rule for caring is to do something for others with tenderness. Be tender and patient even with the one, human or animal, who has been scarred and appears to curse the world. Let them feel your care. Make a care investment everywhere, it is the harmonious thing to do.