The art of caring for others

This article describes today's society as a time of uncertainty, fear, insecurity, selfishness and proposes the art of caring for others as a way out, which means a new time, a society built on the basis of love, respect and solidarity. mutual.

Today's society is characterized by haste, selfishness and indifference to others. A dark and frightening world, where the absurd seems to reign. On all fronts, human beings are increasingly distancing themselves from human beings. Relationships are no longer the same. Distrust reigns with the other. The watchword is: fear. Fear of the other, of relationships. Fear in every way. The word given is no longer valid. It takes "power of attorney," "witness," and "evidence" for one man to trust another man.

 Human relationships are currently marked by objectivity, that is, by what it represents, by what it has or by the position it occupies in the social pyramid. The way of life that today's man leads is detached from all others, in a way that is unprecedented. The time of uncertainty, anguish, insecurity, madness, illusion and “liquid modernity” appears.

According to the Polish sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman, we live in a time of great barbarism and little solidarity. These are times of high competitiveness guided by the logic of accumulating goods and appearances. In the name of this new ideology, individuals allow themselves to act over and above values ​​that they have not even formed. What matters is to be recognized, to be admired, to have access to a multitude of products and services and to enjoy maximum pleasure.

There are more and more instrumentalized relationships, people who live at the expense of others without representing anything or contributing to material, moral and spiritual growth. These people suffer from Down syndrome. “psychological vampirism”. And what is psychological vampirism? It is a contemporary paradigm that defines people who have a predisposition to suck or extract the energies of the other, consciously or unconsciously. They are sick and mediocre people, who do not realize the harm they cause in the lives of others.

Is there a way out, a cure, a remedy for all this malaise in society and contemporary man? Without wanting to seem naive or alienating, we think so! The words of the Spanish theologian and philosopher Leonardo Boff point to a possible path. He says:

“What opposes carelessness and neglect is care. Caring is more than an act, it is an attitude. So it covers more than a moment of attention. It represents an attitude of occupation, concern, responsibility and affective involvement with the other”.

So the way out is the art of caring for the other, and what would that art be? 

The art of caring for the other would be the understanding that life is made of paradoxes and, to walk the path of happiness, the first step is to love the other well. The second step is to accept the other as he is, for a long time, so that the other can be happy. The third step is to always want to learn from the other person, who is different from me and who, for that very reason, deserves to be respected.

Finally, the art of caring for the other is the contemporary paradigm of the human being taking care of the human being itself. 

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