Care of the Soul

Caring is controlling. “I care for my garden” means I till the soil for my potted plants, geraniums, lilacs, lilies, and the like in a determined way, with particular tools and materials. I ensure they receive enough sunlight but not too much. I ensure they are well watered but not overwatered. I shield them from excessively harsh winds and freezing temperatures. I contrive space, for their flourishing. This tending involves as much cunning as caring. Likewise, in hospice work, I care for the dying, whether in the form of counsel or a quiet presence, willing to be with another as the light fades. If my care is a quiet presence, my influence is taciturn. If my care comes in the form of counsel, I frame (or reframe) another’s experience through a particular lens—my own—shaping a perspective, inviting an alternate viewing of reality, I believe for good, not ill, and contrived nonetheless. I discourage and encourage outlooks, simultaneously, cloaking one panorama in favor of another, helping a person transitioning toward the end to know peace (even if anger is what actually needs to be felt) or resolution (even if the fires of regret have not burned bright enough yet) or reconciliation (even if some things cannot and need not be forgiven). My care for a soul is control. I exert willfulness, for another, whether gently or strongly, whether overt or covert, to a very specific end—one the two of us may or may not share in common—an exercise of power, on the mind, body, and soul either way.

Thomas Moore noticed how it is in the nature of things to be drawn to the very experiences that will spoil our innocence, transform our lives, and give us necessary complexity and depth, and this is nowhere more true than with our naive fawning over the idea of care. The very revulsion we might feel when first seeing the connection between caring and controlling only serves to reveal an unfounded bias for a simplistic equation—control is bad, care is good—when, in fact, this is far from anything at all resembling a universal truth. Where would we be without the will of those thoughtful and courageous individuals over the years who dared to thwart tyranny, challenge the status quo, and take the reins of control away from madmen, and, similarly, how much violence has been done to the so-called insane in asylums, to witches and warlocks and all manner of pariahs of the past, effacement, torture, and unspeakable punishments enacted on the bodies of those who differ from the majority and diverge from the mainstream, all in the name of care for order, normalcy, and decency? Control can be a form of care. But care is always some form of control, whether at times for good, ill, and, perhaps most often, for ulterior reasons only partially known at best to both the caregiver and the would-be recipients of care.