She sighed, “It”s too bad that it goes outside my job to care?” The one who needed rescuing suddenly changed and it was now “my hand reaching out over the cliff to pull her up.” My complaints all but forgotten, I answered using the pronoun “We”?”We have to care; we”re still human” and our eyes met in silence to communicate the rest.
So many jobs dehumanize both our clients and ourselves and it is the dehumanizing, the not caring. That is our greatest death for which to fear. How far do we compromise our heart in the act of just surviving, just doing the routine of our job? Too far and we have given up our very reasons to survive.
It”s scary out there and if you watch television, then human kindness is only a prelude to murder. “Bad boys, bad boys, what you gonna do when they come for you??” Maybe television reality is not “the way it is.”
Badly behaving people who substitute life ethics for those acceptable in a poker game whereby deceit and secrecy is part of the winner”s strategy need to rethink. The young boy tried to reassure his mom when she witnessed all the blood and guts and agonizing screaming on the screen after his latest kill by “joy”-stick, “Mom, they”re just electrons.”
People within our scope of power and care are not merely co-players or electrons.
With increased power comes increased responsibility and most of all, the increased opportunity to care. When we make general plans over others, we are not just arranging furniture to make it all look nice. (And things really do look nice around here.) We all need to be able to trust that the planning will include protecting what has already been established or compensating fairly otherwise. Protect property rights for all.
Often the idealist is the first victim of burnout and metamorphoses into the cynic. That”s why it”s important for us all to support the people who try to take on greater responsibility. We need to feed the fountains, those who risk becoming involved ? that would be each of us, ideally.
We are all lifted when we witness human caring no matter in which direction it flows. To receive, to give or to watch it received or given, it does a body good. May those in power see how to care best while rooted in their “higher power.”
Veronica Fisher
Lakeport
