The Nature of Deep Caring
Living in a world and society many centuries removed from our own, Plato offers us an important insight when suggesting that our fear of death is partially assuaged through generativity. He observed that we seek out multiple ways to be generative to ensure that we live beyond ourselves in at least one domain of our life. (Wakefield, 1998, pp. 152-163) Do we engage in good deeds, as Plato suggests, in order to be honored by other people and to spoke of after our death as a person of integrity — a person who led a “good life.” Do we, as Ernest Becker suggests, seek to be heroic in our caring from other people and institutions as a means to deny or even defy death? (Becker, 1973, p. 11) In alignment with Plato and Becker, Wakefield offers the following straightforward observation about humankind:
[I]t makes people happy to know that they will be admired after they are gone for the same reason that it makes them happy to know that they are admired while they are alive by people they have never met; in fact people just like to be admired, irrespective of where when or by whom. (Wakefield, 1998, p. 163)
One of our Sage leaders offers an equally straightforward observation about the generative motive associated with aging:
I think it was Justice Black of the US Supreme Court who said, “All of the rules of relevancy are simply related to a realistic acceptance of the concession of the shortness of life.” If we were going to live 300 years, we’d have plenty of time to endlessly talk things through. But as we get older we’d like to see progress made on some things before we are sent to the crematorium or planted in the back 40 under a little stone. This isn’t a dress rehearsal, so let’s get on with it and see if we can really get something achieved.
We respectfully suggest that Plato, Becker, Wakefield and our Sage leader are only partially right. We certainly seek a form of immortality through the good deeds that we perform in life and long for a linking remembrance as a good person who led a decent and caring life. There seems to be something more, however, to the search for soul through generativity. Living beyond ourselves seems to be something more than the desire for immortality. It seems, ultimately, to be about actions of deep caring that extend us in space and time beyond our current concerns and our current reality. We live beyond ourselves not only to outlive our self, but also to contribute in an extended and sustained manner to the welfare of our family, our community and our world.
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