The Discipline of Devotion

On Remembering How to Care

The concept of care has been the theme of my life lately.

How do we show care to ourselves? To others? To the world around us?

Is care a byproduct of love or is it the evidence of love itself? Can we even have love without care?

Perhaps care is love in motion. The catalyst that transforms a fuzzy feeling into something tangible and true. To say “I love you” is beautiful. But to show care is transformative. Love is a noun, but care is a verb. It lives in the action we take to bring thought into being.

And yet, care has become something we enact less and less. We live in a time where disinterest is mistaken for strength. When did it become cool not to care?

Maybe it started when we became radically self-interested. When we stopped knowing the names of our neighbors. When tapping on phones replaced knocking on doors. When convenience superseded community. When misspelled text messages replaced handwritten love notes.

When “self-care” was packaged as product and sold back to us under the guise of a “soft life.”
When spirituality was hijacked and reduced to the manifestation of more.

Care used to be a presence. A slowness. An attention. Now it is a luxury. But I believe care happens when discipline evolves into devotion; when action shifts from obligation to desire. When it feels easier to show up than to remain stuck, still, stagnant, or silent.

I’ve realized, in my own life, that I haven’t always shown care. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t know how. I was in a rush, and so was everyone around me. Love may be innate, but care, at least as an action, is learned. It is modeled. It is mirrored. It is replicated through relationship and presence.

While the capacity for care may live within us from the start, the expression of it is shaped by what we witness and what we practice. And when our environments lack care we often forget how to give it, even (especially) to ourselves.

Care lives in the quiet details:
Slowing down.
Being with.
Tending to.
Listening deeply.
Watering what we’ve already planted.
Pulling weeds.
Staying present for the change.

It is time spent on time. Time that we rarely give ourselves in a world that constantly demands more. And in that quest for more, we forget: sustainable growth only comes from tending to what already is.

Until we cultivate our capacity to care for the world around us, we will remain empty, because we’ll never be able to truly feel that care in return. We can only receive to the degree that we are able to give.

You will not wake up one day and suddenly be happy just because you got everything you wanted. The wanting never ends.

But if you care for the things you have now, an abundance of joy, gratitude, and satisfaction is always present.

I’m not here to preach perfection. I’m here as a reminder.

Care is not weakness.
Care is not inconvenience.
Care is not currency.

Care is devotion.
And devotion is the seed of everything that matters.

Journal Promp:

How have you been invited to care more deeply for yourself, others, or the world lately?