I write this morning from the heart.
Not that my other messages don't come from the heart (they do), but this message today is weighing on my heart. So forgive me if these thoughts come out a bit raw.
I don't think we choose to care enough about each other.
It's not that we don't have feelings of love or affection, or that we don't actually care. It's that we often don't make the conscious choice to care in a way that makes people feel seen, understood, and appreciated.
We move so quickly through our daily routines, priorities, and tasks that we tend to move through conversations the same way. Even with people close to us. Sometimes, especially with those people. We fail to slow down, put our full attention on them, and choose to care for them.
Instead, we ask surface-level questions, more out of habit than purposeful curiosity, and get surface-level answers, more out of courtesy than honest emotional expression. It happens the other way around, too. People ask us shallow questions, we give superficial answers, and we all move on.
It's that little dance we do. You know the one. Ask the polite question. Give a polite answer. Don't reveal much. Don't feel much. Don't learn anything.
It doesn't take much to deliver a different experience — just a little more discipline to choose to care in the moment. The people in your life want to feel cared for. They need to feel cared for. So do you. So do I.
Everyone is excited about something, dealing with something, struggling with an external obstacle, and wrestling with an internal conflict. But you've got to be interested enough to seek to uncover it. Not prying, but not hustling by with surface exchanges either. Just asking, listening, and caring.
It's easy to get so consumed by our agenda that we miss the chances to care about people enough to discover what's happening with them and within them: Unmet needs. Unappreciated wins. Unspoken feelings. Unnoticed frustrations. Unsolved concerns.
It's all in there. In everyone we know. In everyone we meet.
Waiting on us to choose to care.
The time is now. Do the work.
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