The Basis of Care
On small acts of love and mercy.
Hi Folks,
Over the last year, I have been working on a novel that is, at its core, about what it means to care. For yourself, for another person, for the places around you. For the last four years, I have been immersing myself in stories of hope and healing, stories that seek to make the small, everyday motions of healing as interesting as those of breakdown. Leslie Jamison writes it best in her memoir, The Recovering: “If addiction stories run on the fuel of darkness— the hypnotic spiral of an ongoing, deepening crisis— then recovery is often seen as the narrative slack, the dull terrain of wellness, a tedious addendum to the riveting blaze. I wasn’t immune; I’d always been enthralled by stories of wreckage. But I wanted to know if stories about getting better could ever be as compelling as stories about falling apart. I needed to believe they could.”
This novel that I am writing is in many ways a reflection of my own process of healing. Of learning to care. Of recovering empathy. It is a story I deeply needed years and years ago, when it felt like all I had to fuel my creative work were stories of artists who fell apart and broke down, who drove away all those who cared about them, who sacrificed everything for their work. I did not want that story for my life. I wanted narratives of care to become just as interesting. I wanted to see stories where the sacrifices that were made were in the name of support, of showing up, of learning how to place others in equal standing as yourself.
We need these kinds of stories. It’s been scientifically proven that America has an empathy deficit. We are no longer taught— and perhaps never have been— how to care for others. Nor are we taught how to care for ourselves. We are lonely. We are afraid. We hurt and harm. We live in a country founded on a lack of care, a country that from the beginning has only sought to care for a certain few. We fear what we do not know or what seems different. We often fail to break out of our bubbles of comfort, and as a consequence suffer stagnancy and isolation. We cannot go on like this. It will take conscious effort to break out of these patterns and re-learn the minuscule acts that together add up to a community of care, but we must do it. We have to re-learn how to talk to one another. We have to re-learn how to care for one another, even if we disagree. Even when the care is difficult and frustrating and appears as if it will not add up to a singular meaningful point.
All of this is to say that I believe in mercy. The point of this entire newsletter can be summed up in the following poem by Rudy Francisco, which I will leave you with now.
MERCY
She asked me to kill the spider
Instead, I got the most
peaceful weapons I can find
I take a cup and a napkin.
I catch the spider, put it outside
and allow it to walk away
If I am ever caught in the wrong place
at the wrong place, just being alive
and not bothering anyone,
I hope I am greeted
with the same kind
of mercy.
Your prompt this week is to write about a time someone showed you care. It can be something small, or a larger act. It can be singular or repetitive. What did it look like? How did it feel? Now write about a time you showed someone care. Which one is easier to remember?
Do one kind thing for yourself this week. Then do something for someone else. Read a poem. Share an artist whose work you appreciate it. Tell someone you love them. Then tell them why.
See you next week,
Spencer
I want a relationship like the kind Mitski sings about in this week’s song, I Will: “I will take good care of you / I will take good care of you / Everything you feel is good / If you would only let you / I will wash your hair at night / and dry it off with care / I will see your body bare / And still I will live here…”