“The way of being cared for reveals concretely what a human being is like. Without care, he ceases to be human. If he is not cared for, from birth to death, he breaks down, withers away, loses meaning, and dies. If, throughout life, he doesn’t do everything he undertakes with care, he will end up harming himself and destroying everything around him. This is why care must be understood in the line of the human essence. Caring must be present in everything”, an excerpt from the book “Saber Cuidar” by Leonardo Boff.
When I was in college, a professor suggested I read this excellent book, and on the cover those two magic words: “Knowing how to care” marked me on a journey of discovery that has lasted until today. Caring is intimately connected to love. This divine connection generates, besides the action of caring, another word that makes all the difference in our lives, the famous kindness.
But what in fact is care? A word of only three syllables that carries in itself such important meanings as: a) demonstration of attention; in which there is caution, prudence, or b) application and care in accomplishing something; zeal, care, or yet, c) greater attention in
relation to; concern.
And I am asked: “But Dani, it seems that the application of these terms you mentioned to yourself and to the context around you, is not always so simple, is it? And the answer is: “It’s not simple, but it is possible J”.
The first step is to shut up the Ego, which leads everything and everyone to become potential enemies. Being warlike, it creates a heavy armor that tenses the body and stifles ideas. It prevents creativity from flowing, encourages competition at all times, and makes kindness impossible. And if the voice of the “ex-mighty” is silent, it makes room for us to start listening to another voice: the voice of the heart, also called intuition. It gives us immense comfort internally and awakens our lovingness.
The voice of intuition is gentle and extremely respectful, and only expresses itself when we let down our guard, break our resistances, and connect with the sensitivity of the messages it wants to send us. Here, step by step, we are already entering the world of care and living one of its meanings, which is the demonstration of attention, in which there is caution.
We continue our journey, now softer, less reactive, and we experience one of the other meanings of caring which is more attention to, which in this case is to ourselves, our needs and failures, and also to what is going on around us.
From that point on, we begin to cultivate something that has not always been in our daily life, but which now begins to make perfect sense: application and care in accomplishing something; zeal, care. This last meaning of care has nothing to do with perfection (which is a delirium of the ego). It is connected to the art of giving oneself a lot of love and employing this beauty in every gesture, activity, project, thought, and relationship, because it overflows.
The day-to-day life and the ego may want to drag us along the paths of before, more warlike, reactive and heavy. But now we have something that is the watershed: consciousness. We are the protagonists of the change to lovingness. So, day by day we will propose to water these beautiful seeds that we planted inside ourselves, because loving-care is present in the details, and now we have learned the divine art of Knowing how to Care.