Day 68 A Genuine Anatomy of Caring; and, WIIFM?

Electricity, as we all know, can dry your hair, cook your dinner, and heat or cool your home. It can also electrocute you. Electricity itself is neutral. How you use it is what determines its outcomes.

Strangely, caring is the same way. Caring, like electricity, is neutral. You have to go five definitions deep in the OED before you get to care in the way I mean it: 5. a.5.a An object or matter of care, concern, or solicitude. Under the entry for the verb, it means to provide for.

You can actually care about anything, good, bad, or indifferent. Really, anything that matters to you.

Here’s an example from opinion columnist Charles M. Blow from this morning’s New York Times. “Trump was elected to restore the cultural narrative of the primacy of whiteness.” No thinking person could argue that the Narcissist-in-Chief cares about the primacy of whiteness. Or maleness. Or conservatism. Or obliterating governmental oversight. Or wealth. Or winning.

Here’s another example from health and science writer Pam Belluck also from this morning’s New York Times. She’s writing a story about a young man named Jack McMorrow who has just survived the multisystem pediatric inflammatory syndrome which is emerging.

As he himself said, “‘You could feel it going through your veins and it was almost like someone injected you with straight-up fire.’ Jack, who was previously healthy, was hospitalized with heart failure that day.” Ten days later he went home.

“Pausing near a model of Darth Vader’s castle on his desk, Jack said he once considered becoming an actor. He was even an extra on the TV show ‘Gotham,’ playing a kidnapped orphan. But before getting sick, he was thinking about studying medicine. ‘I was really into the heart,’ he said. Now, he is even more interested. ‘I just want to do more with my life now that I have it back,’ he said, gesturing with his Captain America shield.”

Of course the young man is interested in the heart. His heart has just been through an all-out systemic attack. All of us have heard stories of young people who go to med school because of some childhood experience of illness, be it their own or that of others. The experiences leave them with care, a special kind of care, really. Care that is personal.

Over the course of these daily essays, I have confessed to my personal care about trees, and why I care about them. I’m a novelist; I use too much paper. My care about trees has been sustained over decades. I have the first essay I ever wrote; I was nine. I’ve used up a lot of trees since then. It’s my care about trees, and what they mean to me personally, and to the planet as a whole that has sustained my interest in them for so long.

My care keeps me motivated.

Long-term health columnist Jane E. Brody “takes a look at something many of us might be lacking during the pandemic—motivation. Apparently, there’s another epidemic—one of ennui [French for a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement; sometimes known as boredom]—that is causing us to lack motivation.

Ms. Brody consulted “Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and author of the highly influential book ‘Emotional Intelligence.’” This is a book that made a profound impact on me many years ago. I even gave my mother, the relentless compartmentalizer, a copy, in the hope that she might lighten up.

“Dr. Goleman explained that there are two kinds of motivation, extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic motivation refers to acts done to receive an external reward or outcome like wealth, power or fame, or in some cases to avoid punishment.

“Intrinsic motivation involves behaviors done for their own sake that are personally rewarding, like helping other people, participating in an enjoyable sport or studying a fascinating subject. With intrinsic motivation, inspiration comes from within a person. It tends to be more forceful and the results more fulfilling.”

The good doctor characterizes one effect of the lockdown. “‘The stay-at-home edict has pushed so many of us into an external motivation mode that is making us face something that feels like lethargy and meaninglessness. At the same time, it’s a ripe opportunity to think about what really matters to us.’”

This is, of course, what I have been advocating for all the days of these essays, and for many decades before that. I believe that each one of us is called to live life intrinsically, from the inside out. The reverse is unsustainable and ravening.

So. What do you want? What matters to you? What do you care about?

These are the seminal questions of life. All of them boil down to care.

Dr. Goleman continues, “Doing what’s meaningful—acting on what really matters to a person— is the antidote to burnout.” I’m no Dr. Goleman, but it’s also the answer to ennui. And cynicism. And evil.

He cites psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl whose Yes to Life—In Spite of Everything has just been published in English. Dr. Frankl swore up and down that the only thing humans cannot live without is meaning.

That means meaning to our suffering as well as to our joy. And make no mistake, we are suffering during this pandemic, from the most secure to the least secure, there is suffering, differing only in degree, especially if we cannot summon the energy to care and if we feel that others do not care either.

“He suggests to those who are feeling bereft of motivation: ‘Face what’s happening. What does it mean to me? What really matters to me now? Is there a way I can act upon what’s meaningful to me?’”

If it’s meaningful to you, whatever it is, you care about it, Beloved. And when you care, as Mother Teresa so beautifully said, “you want to do something.”

There’s a dreadful story in this morning’s paper, one that had me in angry tears. A black deliveryman, Travis Miller Sr. was trying to leave a gated neighborhood in Oklahoma after a delivery when a vehicle blocked his path.

“After the driver of the white vehicle, a white man, refused to move, Mr. Miller took out his phone and started recording, using Facebook Live to make sure he had evidence of his innocence for his employer. The 37-minute video has been viewed more than half a million times since he first shared it in real time during the confrontation on the afternoon of May 11.”

This took place in a gated community in a suburb of Edmond, Oklahoma. The customer who received the delivery defused the situation, but not until after Mr. Miller was interrogated by the other homeowner. The customer apologized profusely to Mr. Miller.

“‘What my husband went through Monday was some scary, unnecessary, blatant racism, but the outpouring of love and support has been overwhelming,’ LaShawn Miller, Mr. Miller’s wife, said in a Facebook post on Wednesday.”

I am grateful for the outpouring of support that Mr. Miller received at the same time as I am horrified that he needed it. This is happening everywhere.

“Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, former Surgeon General of the United States and author of the recently published book, Together, explained this month on “The Brian Lehrer Show” on public radio, ‘Our fundamental worth is intrinsic. It’s based on kindness, compassion and generosity, the ability to give and receive love. Service to others has a powerful effect on how we feel about ourselves as well as on how it makes others feel. There are many opportunities to serve, to switch our focus from ourselves to others.’”

Farhad Manjoo, writing from the San Francisco Bay Area, wonders if there could be an “upside to the coronavirus pandemic.”

“In an article that went viral among techies last month, the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen characterized the pandemic as a call to arms to rebuild American institutions, including our cities. Like many of the Valley’s tech princes, Andreessen has often been skeptical of government and its champions, but now here he was, cheering them on: ‘Demonstrate that the public sector can build better hospitals, better schools, better transportation, better cities, better housing,’ he wrote. ‘Stop trying to protect the old, the entrenched, the irrelevant; commit the public sector fully to the future.’”

Here’s old, entrenched, irrelevant. Forbes.com quoted The Horrifier-in-Chief as saying, “Nurses are running into death just like soldiers run into bullets. It’s beautiful.”

The word schadenfreude appeared in an article on Germany’s reopening this morning. I had to look it up. It’s a noun meaning pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune. There’s way too much of this kind of care in the U.S., and around the world. It’s got to stop, and it can, if we’ll each do our own personal part right where we are.

Back to Jane Brody, “Richard J. Davidson, professor of psychology and neuroscientist at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has demonstrated that ‘when individuals engage in generous and altruistic behavior, they actually activate circuits in the brain that are key to fostering well-being.’” In other words, caring for other people can be its own reward.”

Caring, Beloved, is its own reward. But not theoretical, you-should-care-about-this caring. That’s a prescription for even more burnout, more ennui, more lack of motivation. That’s what I call care-taking—no mistake that taking is the principle verb.

Then there’s care-giving. This is the caring that matters, the one with the principle verb that’s giving. Personal caring that leads to giving is what’s going to turn our world around, Beloved, and that’s what’s in it for you, and me, and all of us.

Dr. Susan Corso is a metaphysician and medical intuitive with a private counseling practice for more than 35 years. She has written too many books to list here. Her website is www.susancorso.com

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