My Existential Resolution for the New Year—

Will You Join Me?

When I consider how I might improve my life and my role in society, for the betterment of myself, my family and others, I sometimes turn to the “golden rule”—the biblical admonition to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.  

We could certainly make that sound more contemporaneous by saying “Treat others the way you want to be treated” or perhaps “Offer to others the same respect as you wish to receive”. They all boil down to pretty much the same thing. So, why does it seem so difficult to carry this out? I have lived a long life now, and I have seen the best intentions of so many people evaporate, year after year.

Are we really so self-centered and egocentric that we actually don’t care equally about others as we do about ourselves? Perhaps we could look no further than our families and neighbors to answer that question, but let’s stretch that lense out a bit farther to include strangers—the people we don’t know.  

How often in the last generation have we seen stories about how people don’t “seem to care” in the way our parents’ and grandparents’ generations seemed to? Have we really gone from helping a stranger on the side of a highway to change the tire on their car, to a rider on a subway car setting a homeless person on fire? I think you know the answer to that.

So, should we blame this indifference about each other’s wellbeing on today’s society, or on politics, or the dysfunctional world in which we live, soon to become only worse? What about the internet and social media, or our collective childhoods, or the trauma we have suffered? Surely, we can blame a lot on that!

Any one of those circumstances, and many others, could certainly take the blame.  

But, should they? After all, if we are only as far as about two generations from the more caring and aware elders that we remember, why don’t we instinctively behave more like that ourselves? Would we today, as my late mother-in-law did, give her child a key to let himself into his home after school? Or send him to a neighbor’s house until she came home from work? Most likely, not. And this is but one example of how we have lost the immediacy and comfort of a more caring society.

I am neither a sociologist nor a psychologist, so I don’t want to blow this discussion up any more than I can feasibly argue. Also, I don’t want to get too far away from my point, which is more about how we can take individual responsibility for our own behavior. If we can’t fix the macrocosm, maybe we can at least work on our own microcosms. To take this a step further, this is what I think is missing today: a sense of awareness.  

First, self-awareness. What are we doing in this world and life, and why?  

Second, personal awareness of our fellow humans. Having the presence of mind to know that others exist. (Sounds simplistic, I know, but that fact has diminished exponentially in my lifetime).  

So, what is the first step to treating our fellow humans as we would like to be treated?

First, thinking about them. Making them as important to ourselves as we are to ourselves.  

Why would we do that? Well, we could simply be altruistic and hope that we are contributing to a better life and world. Or, we could think selfishly, and hope that our good deeds are rewarded. Either way, we are contributing to some amount of a greater good.

What difference could it make to a family, for instance, if each person cared about the others at least as equally as themselves? Not to be the Pollyanna here, but what if it simply cut down on bickering and unnecessary arguments? What if that cut down on tension in the group? What if that, then, cut down on headaches and other physical—or psychological—symptoms of anxiety? You get the idea; any amount of one human caring more about others than themselves, or caring at least as much as themselves, improves the quality of life for all of us.

But here is what I have found in my long experience: we do not care enough about others because we don’t think about them. Remember awareness? That presumes thought. If we never think about our friends, family, neighbors and community, how would we ever become aware of them? And, if we are not aware of them, why would we ever care about them?

Fear not that I will launch into a diatribe about how our faces are always buried in our our cell phones or are otherwise watching a screen. You already know all of that. But if we are that selfabsorbed so much of the time, what could we be blocking out?

Thinking, Awareness and Caring.

Did you experience that over the holidays? Or, did you yourself give gifts, for instance, that you felt good about giving, but made no effort to think in advance about how the recipients would enjoy them? If your recipients did not like them (albeit sub rosa), do you think they are happy about having to return the gifts, or give them away to charity? Was that what you were intending?

Let’s look at the reverse:  were you a guest at a holiday dinner where the main course was something that your host knew was something that you are allergic to? Did you feel obliged to try to eat it anyway, or leave half of your plate empty? Did you feel good about that?

We must realize that if, in fact, we believe in some version of the golden rule as a way to improve the quality of our lives and those closest to us, then before we can “Do unto others….”  We must first Think of and about them, be Aware of their wants and needs, and then Care about them.

There are so many ways to do this. In this New Year, let us just start. Simply and sincerely. Even with the small stuff. Especially with the small stuff.

If we cannot do this, individually and together, then what right do we have to complain about our dysfunctional society?

My dear Readers, please join me in this New Year’s resolution to Think, be Aware, and Care; not just about ourselves, but about everyone. I promise you, knowing this from my long lifetime of experience—

It will matter.