On Caring

I stumbled onto this text while reading Nel Noddings "The Challenge to Care in Schools." I believe that Milton Mayeroff's work provides a wonderful foundational look at what caring means. With great theoretical depth he paints a picture that shows how caring can change not only the world, but our intimate self. Caring begins with our desire to help someone grow, whether that is our self, another, an entity. In the end perhaps Mayeroff suggests to us that by caring we change how we view the world and that in itself foments change. I recommend this book highly as a life changing volume.

This wonderful little book outlines a kind of caring that can give order and meaning to our life. Mayeroff's caring is a process in which we selflessly help an 'other' (be it a person, idea, or ideal) to grow and actualize itself. Caring requires effort: Knowing (many things about the other and ourself); Alternating Rhythms (incorporating feedback in our caring); Patience (I like his definition: 'Patience is not waiting passively for something to happen, but it is a kind of participation with the other in which we give fully of ourselves.'); Honesty; Trust (of ourself as well as of the other); Humility; Hope (as an expression of a present alive with possibilities); and Courage. By caring for the other, we become actualized. By focusing on the process, we show our concern for the future through the care we take with what is present now. Caring can give order and meaning to life, if the others we choose are inclusive enough. Then these others become what Mayeroff calls 'appropriate others' -- they enable us to be complete, 'somewhat as playing music enables the musician to be himself.' Appropriate others become a center around which our life can be ordered. Mayeroff believed that through finding and helping to develop our appropriate others, we discover and create the meaning of our life. There are two reasons I wanted to review On Caring. One, it is a wonderful book that has stayed with me since I first read it years ago. Two, when I read The Faithful Wife by Sigrid Undset, I marveled at how beautifully that book seemed to incorporate Mayeroff's ideas.

The concepts Mayeroff presents, are part of the Mission Statement of my company. Caring is a foundation stone that permeates every aspect of the company business. Caring is in our performance reviews, caring is in flexible hours, caring is in time off, caring is required reading for all employees and board members, etc. As Mayeroff states: "Caring has a way of ordering activities and values around itself" (p.65).

The late Dr. Mayeroff, in his book selected for the prestigious World Perspectives Series, evidences everything he describes therein by taking seven plus years to produce this book. An intricate and turgid text describes every facet of caring in the contexts of author, artist and parent, etc. Killed in a tragic car crash on icy Upstate New York winter roads, his work is a tribute to his careful thought and careful teaching