Our current overall culture seems to be self-absorbed and unrecognizing enough toward one another that to care for another is peculiar and strange enough to require its own set of precise legal and employer regulations on who qualifies as a caregiver.
Caregiving is also a category which prompts scores of articles and media stories on the psychology and in person interviews of the oddity of someone who takes care of another person on a consistent basis.
We’ve reached a phase in our shared development in which taking care of a chronic or suddenly ill family member, is considered partly honorable and partly suspect and deserving of close and ongoing employer review and government investigation of need.
A caregiver is often the formal target of employers or informal conversation topic among peers of their psychological and emotional wellbeing based on the belief that taking care of another person to whom one feels obligated, may mean the caregiver is hiding some deeper personal problem.
For whom is there a problem that someone is willing to put aside career progress, limit their social life and leisure time?
If the caregiver willingly invests their own life in this manner, why do we not encourage and support their decision?
That people are willing to be caregivers shows the rest of us the face of human compassion in action.
That someone willingly gives of themselves in some of life’s pressing, sometimes tragic and painful developments creates for the rest of us, an aura of loving acceptance and fulfillment of duty toward people.
Maybe to face that life is sometimes unpleasant is a fact which sectors of our communities simply would rather not face.
To acknowledge that life is not a series of happy moments may change our priorities as consumers and as citizens.
What if in addition to view caregivers as needing to justify helping someone, we balanced this with measures to support their efforts?
At the very least, be glad if you know someone who is a caregiver. This person models commitment and compassion. If you absorb some of their influence we all will benefit from your awareness of human kindness.
