Who cares?

Recently, I have been enlightened about a certain issue. That is one of caring. That post by thought catalog certainly elucidated some thoughts and doubts that I have been harbouring for some time. So why am I writing another post about what has already been written?

I guess this is a cynic's take on care. What does it mean when we care about someone? Derrida argued that there is no such thing as care, less save for God's infinite and unconditional agape love. However, the discussions of God(s) itself warrants a life time of inspection, my matter at hand is much simpler. Why do we bother with people who do not care about us. I am as much a victim, as well as a victimiser of such. I am sure that someone out there cares for me more than I do for them, and I care for people that I shouldn't. There are also degrees of care, so the bottom line is, as Thought Catalog succinctly put,

"So cherish the people who care about you, and do not invest your time, and your heart, into people who do not"

This really spurred me to wipe out some people from my slate. There are some people whom I really want to stop caring. Here are reasons why.

A friend who cares will not ask you to repay a luggage you did not intentionally damage, no matter how expensive it is. A friend who cares will not put a 'bus fare' into the price of a gift share. A friend will not only come to you, when you have problems and then disappear to another continent with their friends to have fun. They will have fun with you, cry with you and most definitely stand by you.

This business of caring, is an expensive one. It costs us a lot of energy, and requires an infinite amount of patience. I am not an easy person to care about, or to love. Neither are you. We all come with our baggage, our emotional demons, and class-A bad habits. We are not perfect, but we are also capable of perfectly understanding each other. I should not hold others for not caring about me, if their resources for care, can only be limited to a few. Some, do not even care about themselves. How can we expect them to extend what they do not inherently recognise that they have? We do not even care for ourselves unconditionally, because we measure our worth based on many things - our ability to make others happy, our ability to be successful etc. We may be scarred from a previous relationship, or are still unsure of the present one.

There needs to be an end to this. So I am saying goodbye to hypocrisy, and my impatience with certain individuals who have become emotional vampires. I will not become the slave of an unrequited effort. My heart has a huge capacity, but it is not a free space.

They say in your 20s, you need to let some people go, and close your circle of friends. They also say that you need to meet more people and "get out there". I suppose this sounds contradictory. I have come to realise that they are not. We go on with our lives, collecting baggage. People whom we thought we "need" in our lives, only to find out later like that ornament that you bought on a whim at a souvenir shop, to collect dust and forgotten, but still occupying the space on the cabinet that ought to have made way for something more valuable.

There are those who care about me, explicitly, enough to want to stay no matter how hard I have made their lives to be (sometimes). I care about them in return to reciprocate the effort. That feeling is magical, and it should be treasured. People do grow apart, and they do see things differently in which 2 people might just stop caring altogether. Until then, who cares?