The Complicated Case of Caring
/
The Complicated Case of Caring
John Paul Derryberry
After doing the same thing for over twenty years, one could consider themselves an expert in that area of life. Yet, after twenty-plus years of working in social work, I cannot say I have figured out social work. It's constantly changing, messy, and a revolving door of issues, confusing many of us in the field about how to create healthy outcomes. I doubt my next twenty years in the field will provide clarity.
That doesn't mean I have not honed and improved upon a specific skill set all these years, helping people make sense of their mess. The ability to care for others in the correct manner. It's often understated and overstated the importance of caring for others. The notion that it's a simple act is the understated part, and the idea that if you just care, more good things will happen is the overstated part. It's a little like the famous Goldilocks and 3 Bears; care too little, and it feels off, and care too much, and it feels like too much. Care just the right amount, and we can do great things.
The problem we face culturally right now is how we are pulled to care about the stuff we should not care about, or we should sacrifice our morals and ethics to care about people who only share our morals and ethics. It's always been like this throughout history. Those setting the terms of what we care about doing their best to manipulate us into poor places of judgment. It is like caring so much about a sporting event outcome that we allow it to ruin relationships around us. Or caring more about the candidate who fakes our religious or moral beliefs instead of actually following our moral or faith compass.
It has been a constant theme throughout my time in social work and as a presenter in the emotional and mental health space to care for others. Not in a medical way but sometimes more profoundly, caring about the person regardless of what they can do for me. I have spent time with wonderful people, surviving the horrors inflicted upon them. I have spent time with people who did the horrible inflection, and they were trying to find a better life after. It's the ability to know we can care for people we disagree with, with folks we do not understand, neighbors with different beliefs, and find a through line to the fact that we are both humans. Humans' thoughts, feelings, emotions, and actions are born from someone else's lack of caring. If we do the caring they didn't get, we could profoundly heal someone.
I get the idea of caring about others based on people conforming to you, but that is an incredibly selfish way to interact with the world. The problem is that it does an unselfish act of caring and turns it into something it is not, erasing the care from any action you take. Caring is most effective when it's unselfish. It's not that it doesn't come without boundaries, but for it to be effective and long-lasting, it has to come from a place so few of us are willing to go today. Into our vulnerabilities, into our doubt that maybe we are wrong, into the notion that we, too, are human and need someone to care for us.
After all these years of caring for people's emotional and mental health, from conservative to liberal, from super religious to devout nonbelievers, and everyone in between. I have learned emotional and mental health problems know no boundaries about who they go after. The path forward for communities is allowing caring in a complex act. After that, engage in it even when it's hard. It's the connective tissue we could use, the hope-bringing material we may need, and it truly is the bridge to several differences we all claim are impossible to overcome. After twenty-plus years of caring for others, I find its complexities one of the most beautiful aspects of life. And its beauty is baked into the complications of caring about others.