It is good not to be too self-centred and worried about our own well-being. Sometimes, by being over-involved with the self, we become selfish and blind to the needs of others, whether they are creative needs, emotional needs, physical needs or the need for opportunity.
Caring has this quality. It opens the door of opportunity for other people. Especially when someone may be rather shy, introvert or have difficulty expressing himself or asserting himself, then it is good to have caring and supportive people around.
In this way, there is always a chance that a person can express his needs and have them met. After all, isn’t that what we are all about as a human world family? Have you ever seen people who seem to belong in the caring professions? Nurses, doctors, therapists, and other people with this quality, fortunately, grace our health and welfare systems. They have to be careful, however, because it is all too easy to overload the self with other people’s problems and consequently suffer from burnout. Burnout comes when I can no longer differentiate my needs from someone else’s needs and sometimes it happens that I adopt other people’s problems to avoid looking at my own.
This becomes a form of sickness, where I become dependent upon other people’s problems to keep myself on a high. It is one thing to recognise that other people are considerably worse off than I am that they are suffering or have suffered more than I do, and this keeps us from feeling sorry for ourselves, but it is quite another thing to make a career out of the weaknesses and sickness of others. A healthy attitude is to make sure that one’s own life is stable and sound, without major problems and weaknesses.
By Dadi Janki