Take care
I recently had my blood drawn in preparation for my annual physical. I used to be nervous about the poke, but now I’m less anxious about being punctured and more frantic about the test results. I think as we age things can go haywire, causing me to become overly anxious with the diagnostic implications.
When I looked up the data, I immediately scanned the report for red numbers — the abnormal results. I saw three values and immediately felt a cold sweat. Then I noticed they were out of range only by a small margin. I took a breath. I’m okay. My doctor will reiterate “drink more water, move more, and cut back on the Whitey’s”.
Even though most of my numbers were right down the middle and I was biologically intact, I realized I still wasn’t healthy. If there was a test for anxiety, my number would have been off the chart.
Then it occurred to me that there are no laboratory tests for emotional health. What if there was? Similar to the biochemical markers, emotional health would be indicated by a value in the middle of two extremes. Too much or too little of an emotion could become a red number. We could test for self-esteem, anxiety, caring, and many other emotional capacities. Of these, let’s consider caring.
How could we measure healthy caring? One extreme could be complete self-absorption. The only thing we care about is ourselves. No one else matters. The other extreme would be total concern for the needs of others. Our own needs have no value. It’s all about me, or it’s all about others. Hmm. Where might your score land? Somewhere in the middle, or would it drift to one side or the other and become a red number?
We have been conditioned to believe that caring for others is noble and that prioritizing our own needs is uncaring. Thanks to writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American philosophy has become one of self-reliance. Thoughts like “I can handle it by myself; I don’t need help; Let me take care of it” reveal our societal norms.
I suspect that many of us are in the red zone of caring for others more than ourselves, and this has led us into the depths of compassion fatigue. Maybe it’s time to try something different. Ask for help. Set some boundaries. Scarf up the last of the Whitey’s. Love thyself.
