There's really no measure in giving or receiving. Sometimes it's just a feeling. Othertimes it's tit for tat in gift and act. The Bible Old and New gives lots of examples. And there's no shortage of backlash against "it". It gets adjusted by dictate and rules; thrown under the bus for promotion and success; cast off when there is general lack. And in short supply when there is opponent and enemy.
Sometimes people are too sick. Others just too mean. And really it can go out the window when there's nothing left to lose. Might be elusive. Maybe not matching up to need. Just may be as much as a busy person can do.
Like a lot of topics it's big and it's seen its share of change. I think of having boiled it down like a lot of things. An over-boiled turnip has become the very best. And some people get cited as the type who'll run towards a fire. Neon lights and dirty streets def don't seem to care. Nor is care often touted as solution.
Never best to say you care when you don't. Hard to care for someone who won't. Insurance had a backhand in line-by-lining its definitions. Even still the fields and work of caring get-overworked. We talk about disruption to the industries but in the caring department it's just kind of quiet. Hard to say, difficult demand, bare minimum required. We've seen what happens when care is banished.
Critically compromised? Yours? Mine? Not required. Suffered damages? We do, talk about it like it's a thing, at times. Is that a way to make some space? I remember teens and parents, students and teachers bombasted with the arguments.
I DON'T GIVE A SHIT
YES YOU DO
NO I don't
YOU DON'T GIVE A SHIT
YES I DO
Not really sure how we made that a surefire formula...care:shit.
Certainly a more modest generation didn't talk about that. Is it that we don't care abour modesty? Or does modesty have something to do with caring?
I know as students covered in towers-collapsed debris, words like disciplines and values on feelings, all our definitions seemed ajumble. And it wasn't enough to just hang a flag. We needed to put ourselves in the meanings even of patriotism. Some concepts did not get re-claimed, like lost luggage, can't find it. And some of that is also loss. Definitely loss of more than some buildings.
Nobody likes to be told who/what to care about. Gave an inch, took a mile is a feeling that replaces care for some. And it seems to be replaced in other ways as well like emojis and thumbs uping and downing.
It can be dangerous to care. So some people care in secret. Some pets, especially dogs and cats, show signs of caring. And some guy has a fish who cares about not getting eaten! Hard to know exactly where to put it, caring, when it can't be shown.
I actually think...America so cares. We see it in wild and wonderful displays of donation--money and time and service. And we even see it as part of law and law enforcement. We find it happening at holidays and spy it in the ordinary. We get shy about it. And we do feel compelled to hide it when we are in classic sports mode. Everything is confused and compromised in the shadow(s) of way bigger than me topics like war. And the balance to freedoms is rights and responsibilities, caring is built into the equasion!
Someone told me good life stories the other day and one was about the extraordinary effort people have made to reconnect broken to overall. It seems a football field was ready to carry on the tradition of play ball! But there was no money in the budget for a job-not-done-properly-repairs to the road getting to and from the field. People stepped up and took care of the problem. Because the field is multi-attached--to school and State and safety--there was "red tape". No match for the strength of caring! A game was played and people came and went.
That kind of showing of care was how the world reinvigorated tourism not all that long ago. It's part of why so much museumification. And it's definitely present as we do routine. Even bitching and moaning indicates caring, albeit an unpleasant version. I experience a lot of people caring, it counterweights most of our issues.
As young people we got money to care and because of caring. Our exposure to the issues of the day had us wading into what to do. And there was plenty of space for non-profit and service work. Even as culture overall swung ferocious about making big money work big, some people stayed committed to caring as central quality. Because of that violence can seem even more contrasting. A pure consumerism, shocking. Uncompensated care/caring, debilitating. Used up, a lot of people with capacity to care admitted. Okay. That's a place. A moderating-type called it. Dialed down on where individuals were on "the journey". In a community, more than one person reporting something can be a red flag or an alarm. The community chooses to respond or not. When AIDS slaughtered a lot of people in a particular community, that community was, in part, too down for the count to help and heal itself. America did rally, maybe not to save the queers, but there was rally to stem sickness. There's been similar response to pandemic. But, like when someone is sick and dying, the movement is such that people can't just take control.
There were people who'd survived World War II actually, who meted out often the best advice. To an 80's/90's crowd, fast and furious; shock and awe; hit and run; smell you later...there wasn't a lot of heeding anything. May be why people interdisciplined, very choppy at first. Coming from, having learned, took from, learned as...we went past HELLO, MY NAME IS by caring to reveal some context.
Yep, there were. Many non-profits were solution to REVOLUTION. And while Tory Amos was singing about little angels everywhere in the heavenly mumu land, and books were titling as Little Altars Everywhere, there was also a blending of military culture with pop culture so we had little armies everywhere. Like with everything, balance can be hard to come by, especially when lines blur, there's overlap and redundancy, competition, and elimination. That's on top of decay and disinterest. Some torches were passed and there's a lot that's grown and otherwise morphed. No doubt there's something for everyone.
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