Those two words are not the same: care, caring. And one doesn’t necessarily translate into the other. Simply: care is an emotion and caring is an act. You can care about someone, something and do absolutely nothing with the feeling, the emotion. But if you’re caring then by definition you are doing something.
To care requires at least a minimum of appreciation. You are interested in … but you haven’t gotten to the point of doing anything about it. Actually you can state in this state indefinitely because there is no requirement on you to act. I may care, be interested in, a person or a ‘thing’ but until this interest escalates into someone/something I value to the point of an action on my part, then there’s no personal involvement. Example: I may care about the Boston Red Socks baseball team and their win/loss record but if they lose a game I may be mildly disappointed but it won’t progress to me actually trying to do something about this.
On the other hand – caring always includes some personal involvement. And personal involvement always includes some action. If I truly care then I will be caring about the other person/’thing’ actively. Valuing, in this situation, is an action verb. Quite often this action will be costly to me personally not just an emotional reaction. Caring is visible – others can see the object of my caring. Caring means that I want the best for the other – most cases this is a person not merely a ‘thing’, though it can be – example: one’s job, even one’s toys. However, the only meaningful caring is in terms of people.
So why am I even mentioning this? Because we too often say we care about … (fill in the blank) but does this move into caring? Do our actions support this? And if we care… shouldn’t we be caring?
