The Paradox of Care

I was listening to a podcast recently while on my afternoon walk. I was walking through the local fairgrounds, not far from my office. They were getting ready for a large ag show, and I found myself admiring the classic tractors they had on display.

Not exactly the setting where you expect some deep personal question to show up.

But that is usually how it happens, isn’t it? You are doing something ordinary, half paying attention, half lost in your own head, and then some idea catches you at just the right angle.

I cannot remember the exact wording, and I’m not even sure I am remembering the speaker correctly. It may have been Joe Dispenza. It may have been someone else entirely. But the idea stuck with me.

There are two beliefs we keep handing each other: take care of yourself first, and take care of others first.

And there it was, sitting right in front of me. Two ideas we hear all the time. Two ideas that both sound right. So which path are we supposed to follow? Self? Others? Both? Neither?

I sat with that for a while. And now I’m putting it in writing so I can work through it. You are the lucky ones who get to hear me ramble.

I think this one hits close because, for as long as I can remember, I have felt pulled between these two ideas. Take care of yourself. Take care of others. I do not think I have lived completely on one side or the other. If anything, I probably lean toward others first. But most days, I think I live somewhere in the middle, trying to figure out what the moment is asking for.

And it has become even louder over the last five or six years, as I have started paying more attention to my mental health, my body, my habits, my relationships, and whatever we want to call the deeper work of being human. The more I pay attention, the harder it is to believe one clean rule can handle real life.

And it usually does not show up in dramatic ways. It shows up in ordinary moments. A text I do not know how to answer. A request I want to help with, but feel my body hesitate. A day when I want to be useful and also want to be left alone. A moment when I have to ask myself if I am choosing from honesty, or just running the same old program.

Honestly, I do not think there is a clean answer here. It feels more like something we have to keep paying attention to as life is happening.

That is what makes it difficult, at least for me. I can see the truth in both, and I can see the danger in both. I want boundaries, but I also want belonging. I want to be honest about my own capacity, but I do not want self-protection to become isolation. I want to care for others, but I do not want care to become performance, obligation, or proof that I am good.

That is the discomfort. And maybe that is where the writing has to begin.

“Take care of yourself first” can be real medicine for someone who has spent their life being useful. It can wake up the person who became dependable before they ever became honest. For that person, self-care is not selfishness. It is an interruption. And sometimes, a necessary one.

I understand that side of it. There are times when stepping back is not avoidance. It is survival. There are times when the kindest thing we can do is stop pretending we have more capacity than we do. There are times when a boundary is not a wall. It is just the truth spoken before resentment has to speak it for us.

But I also know how easily “self first” can turn into something else. It can become a way to avoid being needed. It can make isolation sound wise and avoidance sound healthy. And that is where I start to question it, because I do not want self-care to become just another script. I do not want to lose myself in other people, but I also do not want to use healing language to justify closing the door on everyone else.

Then there is “take care of others first.”

And honestly, COVID made that one harder to ignore. Being cut off from each other did not automatically make us calmer, wiser, or more healed. For a lot of people, it showed something much simpler: we need each other. We need ordinary human connection. We are not meant to live as private self-improvement projects.

Helping someone else can interrupt the loop of our own thoughts. It can reconnect us to meaning. Sometimes showing up for another person is not the thing that drains us. Sometimes it is the thing that brings us back into relationship with life.

But “others first” can go wrong too. It can turn into self-abandonment with a halo. It can make exhaustion look noble. It can turn being needed into an identity. And once that happens, rest starts to feel like betrayal.

I know that one a little too well. For the better part of three decades, I let “others first” become part of my identity, especially at work. No matter how I felt inside, I put the work first. The job first. The factory first. Because I was a team player. Because I did not want to let anyone down.

And maybe I didn’t.

At least not in the obvious ways.

But somewhere in there, I did let myself down. And probably my friends and family too. Not because I did not care about them, but because I had been trained to believe that showing up meant pushing through. That being dependable meant ignoring the cost. That being good at my job meant giving more of myself than I knew how to replace.

That is the problem with “others first” when it becomes automatic. It does not always look like self-destruction from the outside. Sometimes it looks like responsibility. Sometimes it looks like loyalty. Sometimes it looks like being the guy everyone can count on.

Until one day you realize being counted on is not the same thing as being whole.

That is the part I keep coming back to. Neither side is the whole truth. The danger is what happens when either one becomes automatic.

When we decide care has a fixed order, we stop listening to what is actually happening. We stop asking better questions.

Am I saying yes because love is present, or because guilt got there first?

Am I saying no because I am clear, or because I am afraid to be close?

Am I helping because I have the capacity, or because I do not know who I am when I am not useful?

Am I resting because I need rest, or because I have mistaken withdrawal for healing?

Those questions are harder than choosing a side. They do not let us hide behind being the selfless one or the healed one. They ask us to be honest in real time, which is usually a lot less convenient.

That is where mindfulness comes in for me. Not as a performance of calm. Not as a way to make everything peaceful. But as a way of noticing what is actually happening before the old script takes over.

The breath does not solve the paradox. It does not hand us an answer. But it can bring us back to the place where the question has to be lived: this conversation, this request, this limit, this tiredness, this want to be both free and connected.

Maybe care was never meant to be a hierarchy. Maybe it was never self first or others first. Maybe care is the practice of not disappearing in either direction: not abandoning ourselves to be loved, and not abandoning others to feel safe.

This is why I often remind myself, and anyone who will listen, to question everything and pay attention to what feels honest. Not what feels easy. Not what feels familiar. Not what gives us the cleanest identity. Not what others tell us is right.

Because most of us are not just making choices. We are repeating programming. Family programming. Cultural programming. Religious programming. Wellness programming. Survival programming. Scripts we inherited before we even knew we were allowed to question them.

And maybe that is the real work here: not deciding which philosophy wins, but learning to notice when we are following a script instead of listening to what is actually true in the moment.

So there it is. My rant. My thoughts for the day.

No real answers. Just questions.

Maybe that is annoying. Maybe that is honest.

I know this probably leaves you hanging, but I am not sure there is a clean answer here. I only know it is not one way or the other. It is not only self first, and it is not only others first. It is the tension between the two.

The work of being ourselves without becoming closed off. The work of caring for others without disappearing. The work of being human without turning every piece of advice into another rule.

And with that, maybe it is time to pour myself a bourbon, grab a cigar, and sit with it a little longer.

But before I do, I am curious what you think.

Is it one way or the other? Should we live more in self, or should we live more in others? Or is the real work learning how to notice what the moment is asking of us?

If this resonates with you, take it with you. Sit with it. Question it. Push back on it. Let it stir something honest.

And if you know someone else who is caught somewhere between caring for themselves and showing up for everyone else, maybe send this their way.

Not because I have the answer.

But because maybe they are asking the same question.

Always remember to Just Breathe.

The Unscripted Mind

For more essays go to https://just-breathe.ghost.io

See you there.