Anniversary of Caring

I began writing this blog on October 4, 2011. Over two years of nearly daily writing. I said at the beginning this was a personal journal, my personal journal. I wanted to write what I was going through, what I was thinking and feeling, all the while attempting to find some conclusion as to what life means, what an individual’s life accounts for, and what I bring to that struggle consciously.

Along the way I have gained new friends and lost old ones. Some have simply disappeared without a word. One took his own life. Some have succumbed to illness.

Then too I have come to know friends and family in fuller depth. I hope they have come to know me more fully as well!

At first I wrote every day, seven days each week. After a year of this schedule a friend suggested I take Sundays off. I did. Later the same friend suggested I write a short piece for Saturday mornings that asked readers to think on a thought over the weekend. That’s when I began offering ‘Thought for the Day’ on Saturdays.

Today’s blog posting is number 687. Although only 14 people have signed on as followers of the blog, 28,770 views of the blog have been tallied. Clearly someone reads the blog and tells someone else and in turn they, too, read the blog. While there they may browse earlier postings. Such is the nature of blogging and life on the internet.

I write about topics that matter to me. Why they matter I don’t know. I have often asked that question of myself!  I have had people tell me they sense a need on my part to write, to think out feelings and logic of specific topics. And that is all true. Without thinking about it in that way, those conclusions are true.

I am seeking meaning. I am trying to place many subjects into one huge vat and make some sense of it. I have accessed ideas from others as well. The internet is a treasure trove of such ideas. Not all of the thinkers are political. Many are theologians, philosophers, and artists. Some are historians drawing parallels of Man’s storyline to modern day happenings.

A recent quote from Rachel Maddow caused me to stop and think. Here it is:

“The biggest divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, it’s between people who care and people who don’t care.”

I don’t know what these words mean to you, but they helped me grasp a simple truth – justice begins in my heart, caring for the well being of others. Injustice is my sense that others don’t care about the other people different from themselves, and worse, they actively seek to eliminate those people from their frame of reference, government, church, what have you! They focus on their own well-being and care nothing about others.

Yet these same people are often found in churches, mosques, temples and synagogues, praying to a god seeking justice and safety from life’s harsh realities. They say they care for others but perhaps only because they hope others care for them should they suffer personal reversals in life. They reach out in small ways, feel good about themselves, but miss the whole point of the effort.

Caring is about getting outside of yourself.

That’s it. Doing this loses the self and allows the self to explore aspects of life totally unthought-of of before. Relevance, discovery, meaning, strengthening the self, are all elements that emerge. And the doer is enriched enormously by the efforts.

Take another idea, this time from Bill Watterson:

“If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I’ll bet they’d live a lot differently.”

Sensing the vastness of the cosmos…losing one’s thoughts in the inky blackness of the night sky while bright bangles of stars illuminate the mystery. The insignificance of one person, yet the importance of the being-ness of one person.

I recall driving home from Duluth, Minnesota, one early morning. I awoke in a hotel at 2:30 am, packed, showered and checked out by 3:10, and drove off toward Chicago. Deepest darkness of night – but wait, once on the highway in the country, the stars shone so brightly it felt I could reach out the window and touch them. Big, bright, and scintillating. Very real. No light pollution to wash them out of view. Stark white light.

It was an Aha moment! It changed me and my thinking. It humanized me in a way I was not moments before.

Caring and tuning in the universe. Two things I have been working on for a very long time. I still find them challenging. And they continue to enrich me.

I can only hope your journey is doing the same for you!

October 7, 2013