Claudia Chan

Today, I got a sore throat so I stayed home.

Since the beginning of Jan, I started writing on Wed mornings. For two hours, I wrote whatever I wanted to write.

So even though I was sick, I still pulled out my laptop because I wanted to continue this writing.

If I make this open, would you be interested in it?

It's basically joining my zoom room, and we'll just take time to write. You can write a journal, you can write your book, you can write your email sequence. Or if you don't have anything to write, I can give you a promote to write about.

Would this be of interest to you? You can reply to this post to let me know.

Recently, I’d been watching YouTube videos of this Shaolin monk called Shi Heng Yi

One of the videos was his TED Talk about the missing link.

He shared about how one of the links he saw missing was the ‘care’ within ourselves

“When you don’t care, you don’t spend time with it….

But you can only care for some one, or some thing, if you only know how care feels.”

THIS.

This caught my attention. Because… for the majority of my life, I had used this sentence.

“I don’t care.”

Care, is a funny word.

Looking back, I thought.. was I not cared for?

I mean, my parents “cared” for me.

Yet, a lot of times, it wasn’t the care that I needed.

I didn’t know how care feels like.

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When my mom asked me to help out, she would demand that thing according to her timing, and instructed me to do things a certain way, and if I didn’t follow, then I'd get berated and criticized.

Care meant to be given an opportunity to do thing my way, and be grateful of it.

When my mom didn’t ask for help, but expected it out of the blue, and went on a shameful rant about how none of us are helpful at all.

Care meant to lay it out in the open to talk about it as a family, asking others for opinions and contributions.

Listening with respect, working as a team.

Of course growing up in an Asian family household, this was not a thing.

So I ended up not caring.

Because if my opinions were not cared of to begin with, if my feelings were not taken into consideration to begin with. Why would I want to give that back to someone?

And this was how it all started.

It didn’t stop there. Once my mom told me to keep my flaws behind closed doors, that I can’t show my weakness with others, this wall just kept building.

And with the law of mirroring, the more I didn’t care about myself, I didn’t care about others as much either.

If they resonate with me and want to be my friend, sure I can be their friend.

If they don’t care too much about making friends with me, then they can just leave.

This extended into my work life.

There were so many times things were happening at work where I'd say, “I don’t care”.

My colleague was like, but you should care more.

I pondered about it, thinking.. why?

Why should one care?

This has been a question I’d been wrestling with for years.

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For me, care is not only about being physically cared for: like being provided a safe space to live, having food on the table, having all the material things in the world.

Care, for me, is to know that I matter.

My opinions matter.

My voice matters.

My experiences matter

My feelings matter.

I matter.

And not only that, I am respected when I share them.

That I don’t get made fun of.

When other people’s opinions differ from mine, rather than being attacked, they actually try to find out why I think differently.

They want to hear exactly what I have to say.

Rather than dismissing my feelings, they sit with me, let me know that they’re with me.

And if they see that I’m in a slump, they will do their best to pull me out, show me what’s possible, share with me what they saw in me. Paint a picture of possibility and share that vision with me.

How do I bring “care” into my life?

The truth is, it’s a journey, and I’d been on this journey for decades.

I’d been called selfish, apathetic, disrespectful, aloof, taker, etc.

If I hadn’t gone through those moments, I wouldn’t know.

I think the most important, is for me to really care about me first.

Because when I “don’t care” about others, it’s also because I “don’t care” about myself.

I’m learning to value my own opinions, my voice, my experiences, my feelings…

They all matter to me.

And no one else care more about them than me.

Second, I have to say that the people whom I’d attracted into my life had been phenomenal.

Because they would harp again and again to my face, how great I am, how brilliant I am, how strong I am, how amazing I am. Even when I didn’t believe in them.

It is through them, I learned to love myself, to care about myself.

The one two punch.

Me having people around to lift me up.

And me learning to lift myself up.

Having people who care about me.

So I can care about me.

And then I can go out and care about others.

“Because you can only care for some one, or some thing, if you only know how care feels.”

And through this, I’m moving forward, learning how to care more about the important things in my life. And care less of other things that really don’t matter.

What do you care about? How did you learn to "care"? What are some things you're learning to care less of? or more of?

Would love to hear about them.