On caring: who cares?

Some people worry. They worry about things both relevant and irrelevant to them. They start worrying when they get up and they fall asleep worrying. They worry like it’s a vocation.

I am such a person and I come from a long line of worriers.

So, last week, when BC Pires came out as a cancer-fighter, it was inevitable I would begin to worry about him. But before the worry there was something else – and this was a surprise – I got this burning at the back of my neck that always means two things: the first is terror, the second is love.

Even as – or especially as – a professional worrier, I know I have no business taking on BC’s situation. I can’t do anything about it. He didn’t ask for my help. He has no need of me.

In short, absolutely nothing about our relationship has changed.

And so, in the way of my people (people who are impelled to fret) I committed myself to interrogating one of his close friends about his doctors, his care, his mood, his treatment. Did he want visits, calls, soup, books, ice-cream, a better world, a new government? Whatever it was, I could and would get it for him.

But if you read his coming-out column – and you should – you’d know all I was doing was scratching an itch over which I have no control. He has control. Somewhere in the world resides the smallest nutshell and that’s all I’d need to put his story in: He’s got this.

Now, in the words of 3canal and roadside preachers: Revelation time!

I’ve known lots of people who are sick, or have been sick, or have signs of sickness to come. And when I heard about their troubles, I offered companionship and soup and all the things I wanted to offer to BC, but – big but – I didn’t have the burning neck.

BC writes a column in this newspaper. He’s been writing columns across our landscape of newspapers since I was in secondary school. We are colleagues of a sort. But he is not my good-good friend. He is not my brother.

We – not just me – “we” as in people in general, can and often do, care about people who have nothing to do with us.

And this, I have a feeling, is what will save us. I mean save us in a redeeming sense, and also in a very literal sense.

We spend thought after thought, and conversation after conversation, reflecting on the uncaringness of the world. And we’re not even doing it consciously.

But it’s there in every cuss we cuss about a bad drive. Every time we wonder why young people now have no broughtupsy. Every time we look at people we think should know better and wonder when they lost their broughtupsy. (Sorry, sorry, I always promised myself I wouldn’t talk about politics here.)

So, we spend all this time tightly wound around all these petty grievances and wondering how many deaths-by-a-thousand-cuts we can die.

Then, one day, something happens. Something jolts us out of complaining and into – not to make too much of it – but into compassion. Caring.

Maybe you care about a war you only see on TV. Or all of a sudden you’re bothered by a kind of racism that happens in another part of the world. Or one day the front-page murders and missing children are just too much for you.

The very first Head Space column was about something I called “world sadness.” It’s exactly what it sounds like – being sad because of how the world has turned out. Despite how wretched that sounds, maybe it’s not out of touch with “world care.”

I once heard a wonderful story about a man who was allegedly involved in a profound level of rogue justice in his country (not here), but managed to spend his spare time trying to improve conditions for university students in need. That’s so much better than anything I’ve ever done.

I know why my neck was burning. BC is a good writer. Maybe an excellent writer. He is, beyond that, a generous writer, and there are not so very many of those. His writing and his generosity have, I know it, already saved people in both the figurative and literal ways.

You don’t have to take soup to everyone. Noticing, bearing witness, acknowledging – whatever you want to call it, that’s part of caring. Something and some things matter.

Even if you aren’t personally involved or cannot, in fact, do any firetrucking thing about it.

Remember to talk to your doctor or therapist if you want to know more about what you read here. In many cases, there’s no single solution or diagnosis to a mental health concern. Many people suffer from more than one condition.