Ramblings of an ageing teen...

Part 5- Easy vs Hard

This may be easy to understand for some, but hard to understand for most. To some people understanding is a way of agreeing. Not to me. It is more like accepting that people have a right to their own opinion and respecting it, even if you don't agree with it. For example, two friends of different religions, they both accept that they each believe in different ideologies and pray in different ways. Yet they respect each other, understanding that each is entitled to their own beliefs.

Why then do people get tense when they encounter something they don't believe or agree with? Why is the mere mention of something new a sudden threat? Is it a case of how open-minded we can each be individually? Are you surrounded by open-minded people? Should we only surround ourselves with understanding people? Often though, it does occur that when we do not understand a thing, our 'understanding' becomes replaced with rejection of that thing. Why do we totally reject it and walk away... Not caring to listen for a second more, becoming deaf to what is said and seen, not bothering to investigate further and find sense in a thing. Is the problem, really then, that maybe we simply don't care...enough.

What does it mean to care? What does it mean not to care? Is it subjective? Or can we define it? Isn't not caring, still actually caring, because you care enough to actively not care? Does that make sense? Should it make sense at all? Maybe caring could also mean helping...if so, what does helping mean? How do you help in the right way, without making the situation worse and without interfering? Do we care about things only because we prefer a thing or like a thing... For example, helping a person no because they need they help, but because seeing them suffer hurts you (or hurts your conscience), and doesn't that mean your not really helping them but rather helping yourself. Then wouldn't that make you selfish, rather than helpful...

What then is caring? Could we rather define it as helping another at the cost of yourself? Isn't it then, to give up something you treasure? Would that be true caring? To take that kind of selflessness and do it over, and over, and over again...without a second thought, without a flinch. And then, what would be left of you, I wonder? Is that caring? What do you think? How does that make you feel? What would it mean to you?