Marumarum is a publication focused on sending Positive Messages Into Negative Spaces.
Every week we share brief articles on a variety of topics aiming to shed light on a new aspect of life. Additionally, there are longer articles on projects or concentrated ideas on a monthly basis.
-Parker Dellis at Marum Studios
[007] Just… care?
When thinking about what it means to care about something or someone, we often associate it with an emotional action of selflessness. Someone is dealing with a hard loss so we feel compelled by our caring to pick them up a coffee and that’s that. Then, we move on. But should caring mean more than this? For example, is picking and choosing what we care about a true form of caring? How is it we might be enthusiastic about one activity while we can be filled with dread about another activity? In situations where it’s easier to not care about something or someone, we might choose to complain, be angry, be frustrated, or distance ourselves. Is there a reason we should care about anything or everything? But.. what if we did care about everything?
Caring requires a few ingredients and one of those ingredients is motivation. Whether it is intrinsic or external we might have some sort of motivation to see our caring through to a certain point. This caring might be a product of our invested time into something or because we instinctively have interests. When we instinctively care about something, we are able to instantly jump in and start working on caring. Motivation is finicky as it can come and go in waves, often riding our emotions and dreams, but with a little focus we can better balance out our care. It’s easy to find distractions in all corners of our life, so to care about anything we need to focus on why we care and why we should care. Without focus, we might lose focus and start caring about the wrong goal or thing, and even we might lose interest in caring and consider jumping ship on caring.
With motivation and focus, our care for the people and work in our lives is able to over strengthen the draining and fatiguing aspects of life that attempt to prevent us from caring in the first place. Many times in life, it is actually easier to not care than care because by caring we might feel drained, out of control, and have a sense of someone taking away “our” time. It takes a lot of effort and reason to find the strength to care, and we should care because we have nothing to gain by not caring. If we want to grow through life we cannot avoid grueling and arduous tasks in life, so learning to care through these situations means finding the strength to rise above our present circumstances.
Our uninterest in caring only feeds into our “complain first and care later” mindsets. To mentally [emotionally, physically, and spiritually] shift from not caring to caring means that we have to invest ourselves into some idea tiny and unstable. For example, let’s say we are working on a project at work or school and find ourselves uninterested for whatever reason. We have the choice to not care about the miserable work or we can find one aspect, no matter how tiny a chance of hope, that makes it worthwhile to care about this project. Maybe we find a new skill or we try to prove something to ourselves, whatever it might be if we can buy into it we might be able to care more. We by no means have to love or enjoy the task, but caring isn’t about a selfish investment. Instead, by caring with confidence we can process the feeling that we have in order to turn present frustrating situations into opportunities to care and grow.
All we have is the now. And the now comes with a lot of things to care about, so unfortunately our hearts and minds can only care about so much. Prioritizing what we care about is essential in balancing out not our life as a whole but our daily energy. By not caring we lose the opportunity to grow in unexpected areas of life. Caring is a fruitful testing of ourselves that impacts others too. We have a lot to care about in life, so let us be confident in not only what we do, but in what we care about; how we care; what we care about, and who we care about.
Next steps [+] things to consider:
Research different types of caring and reflect on which ones resonate with you. Potential areas of interest: self-care, elderly-care, community-care, pet-care, mental-care, emotional-care, spiritual-care, physical-care, relationship-care, and work-care.
Care Small to start. If we can learn to care about something small with all our being then we can translate that into something larger. Additionally, learning to care in small doses prevents us from being overwhelmed to the point of not caring.
Test Trial caring. Find something to care about and create a plan to learn how to care for it. Then, share with an accountability partner what your plan is and reflect on your findings. How does it make you feel? What has been the hardest part about caring? Where have you been succeeding?
[Thought] Calendars are…
While stumbling into this channel on Are.na, I realized how uniform calendars are. A rectangle with an image on top and a bunch of rectangles with dates below that. Why aren’t there circular calendars? Doesn’t the Earth revolve around the sun? Doesn’t the Earth rotate on its own axis after 24 hours? If all these circular actions dictate the time and thus the calendar, why aren’t calendars circles? Besides the fact circular calendars aren’t very functional, I wonder what they might look like…
Explore this Calendar Project by Selina Kehuan Wu {here}
[Tool] Class Central
About 1000 Universities, over 70 providers, and 600+ institutions. Class Central effectively finds courses from all over the internet and compiles them onto one website. Yes, you could go to Coursera or Skillshare or LinkedIn learning to find your next class, but by searching on Class Central, you can find all the free and paid courses one can need. What course will you be taking next?
Investigate Class Central {here}
If You Have Time to Spare
[+] Channel: Pho-gettaboutit by Kevin Ciao on Are.na {here}
[+] A Tour Poster We Enjoy
[+] Ever heard of economic moats? Neither had I. This brief video talks about what it means to find a niche in your work and business {here}
[+] Quote on using the internet: “Use the time of a total stranger in such a was that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.” -Kurt Vonnegut
Marum Resources:
[+] Are.na
Thanks for reading. I know we are all busy, so I appreciate your time! For further discourse, feel free to comment below or reach out on are.na and Instagram.
Thoughtfully written! Makes me think about “caring” and its connection to curiosity and empathy.