Reclaiming the sense of caring

Lost and Found

I’m often struck by a lack of caring all around me and in myself. Its footprints are everywhere. As I wrote this, Russia invaded Ukraine, triggering what might be the worst armed conflict in Europe since World War II. Closer home, in Karnataka, the absence of caring has been an important factor in the disturbing events known as the ‘hijab row’. Children right out of high school marching in saffron stoles and turbans given to them to make a spectacle of their Hindu identity to serve someone’s political purpose; and that sordid incident of a lone Muslim girl being heckled in full public view by a group of boys — none of this warms the heart.

But this loss of caring is not to be found in the big events alone. It’s there, for example, as the sarcasm we direct at our children because they fail to meet our expectations, or as the constant disapproval we direct at our own selves for what we consider our irredeemable failings. In fact, it could well be that these small losses of caring, the little lapses of attention, add up to the big ones, the ones that leave us paralysed and shell-shocked or in denial and disbelief.

How, then, can we bring ourselves to keep caring in the face of the wars, the divisive political agendas, the indignities of life in a country of poor people such as India? Of loneliness, of meaninglessness, of unyielding cynicism? How can we find that which is alive and sensitive despite this, and in response to this? How might we go about reclaiming the sense of caring, if we can call it that?

It may need us to pierce through the deadness around our hearts and challenge our disbelief in the simple and visceral knowing that life is valuable in and of itself. Our response to life in the normal course is a wounded one but, still, I wonder if healing can come by way of poking in the embers of what remains.

What may we find if we do this? We may come across the many ways in which we refuse to care; that is, we may uncover apathy or indifference or irritation and anger, or indeed the big one – fear -- that morphs to shame and hate, and functions as a kind of protection against the vulnerability and the flowing chaos that is life.

And in seeing this, maybe we can discover something that escapes us otherwise. We may find that in the space where there would have been our usual hardened response to a situation, there is something else, too. Or rather that these responses seem to cover up an openness that is also present. We understand that there is more to us than our habitual responses of feeling, thinking and being.

Perhaps this is what J Krishnamurti alluded to as the birth of intelligence in us, and what the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh meant when he said that understanding and love are two sides of the same reality. To care, then, may be to find that moment of openness — we could call it courage — when we can step out of the bounds of what we call ‘ourselves’. It may actually be a breakthrough, facilitating a reaching out that has always been present.

I’ll leave you with a small aside. There is a beautiful Krishna temple in the vicinity of where I live in Bengaluru. The idol in this temple, that of Krishna as Venugopala, the cowherd playing on his flute, is so wonderful to look at that when I am somewhat receptive, I am unfailingly moved by its beauty. Yet, there are days when I go into the temple and come out completely untouched. I can sense that something in me has closed up when this happens, and I’ve asked and prayed in this same place for my heart to be always open.

But now, I’m beginning to realise that this is not going to happen through some miraculous transformation. The music of caring, that I can connect with on the days when I’m open, is perhaps all that I can have. That it exists is a reminder of the possibility of caring. And for all the times that I’m unable to care, I know I will have to look to myself for answers.

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