Care-giving is greedy

Care-taking is generous

Take good care of my truck Jimmy. She deserves it.

I smiled and quipped back.

I’ll give that truck a lot of care, I replied, believing that ‘giving’ care was somehow coming from a better place than ‘taking’ it.

JR looked at me like I was a horse in a milking stall.

Why in the name of gnats and giants would ya do that?

JR, with his ninth grade education was far more cleaver than me. He understood a few important things with regard to care.

Being careful is generous

Taking care is generous.

Giving care?

Is really quite selfish.

But the worst thing you can do when it comes to ‘care’ is to ask someone to be ‘careful’.

This has to do with our contemporary confusion around the word ‘care’.

Well, it does for me.

In my mind, ‘care’ means comfort and is associated with compassion and empathy and tending to the sick.

In my mind, ‘care’ not only rhymes with ‘bear’ but seems to have something to do with soothing, cuddling and teddy bears.

It doesn’t really.

Well… Maybe it does, in some extreme circumstances.

B…