How To Care

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How To Care

There's an anecdote about the famous American anthropologist Margaret Mead: In a seminar, she was reportedly asked by a student what she thought was the first sign of civilization. The student expected Mead to mention clay pots, grinding stones, or something similar. But Mead explained that the earliest sign of civilization was the discovery of a femur that had been broken and healed. In nature, we would die if a femur were broken - we couldn't run from enemies or procure food. A femur that could heal showed that there must have been someone who cared for the injured person, supported them, and nursed them back to health. This act of caring for another person through a challenging situation was the beginning of civilization. The student was astonished.

A Life Of Care

Our entire lives are entangled in giving and receiving care.

When we are sick, we need help. Young children require that we care for them, because they cannot yet care for themselves. And the elderly can no longer care for themselves alone. The time between childhood and old age is usually not seen as a life stage in which we are dependent on others. And yet, we are: When we have heartbreak, we need others to hold us in our pain. When we are anxious about our job, a new beginning or an ending approaches, we need support. When people around us die or become seriously ill, we wish we could lean on someone. In times of crisis, like the ones we are currently experiencing, we need pillars of support. At birth, we need people to give us strength and help, just as in the time of parenthood. When we return home after a strenuous day, we wish for open arms or at least a person on the phone who shares in our daily life. We want to share joy, excitement, happiness. Even on the days when everything seems to be going wonderfully, we are glad to be able to share this feeling of a good day: When we experience a joyful surprise, we reach for the phone to tell our best friend about it. That is when our reality becomes meaningful. We need to be cared for and connected, and we care for others. Every day. From the cradle to the grave.

The Crisis of Capacity

We are living through a care crisis. Not only in the industry sense - where care work is chronically underpaid, if it is paid at all - but in a personal one. We are wired to care, but our attention is trapped in a room where a hundred radios are playing at once. The result isn't music; it's a paralyzing cacophony. There is simply too much to care about: polar bears and children in foreign countries, microplastics and social justice, our careers, our relationships, our health, the climate.

This feeling of paralysis isn't a personal failure; it's a biological reality. When the renowned British anthropologist Robin Dunbar discovered what's now known as "Dunbar's Number," he defined the cognitive limit on the quantity of stable social relationships a person can maintain, at around 150 people. But Dunbar himself broke this down into concentric circles. At the core, we have our 5 closest confidants - our most intimate companions, like a life partner, closest family members, or best friends. Moving outward, we have 15 close friends, then 50 good friends.

From a neurocognitive perspective, our social processing capabilities are fundamentally constrained. In Dunbar's view, the innermost circle of our relationships - the people our brain affords special priority - is limited to around five. Our capacity for deep, meaningful care is, by its very nature, finite.

The scope of what we are told is relevant to being a functioning citizen, however, has become paralyzing. And so, scrambling for orientation, we end up reaching for any pointers about what we should care about. We let other people tell us.

Because we don't understand that the real problem is one of capacity, we try to solve the wrong thing. We become trapped in reactive behaviors that make the situation worse. Productivity culture tells us to optimize and measure everything with endless to-do lists. Self-help books promise we can "have it all" if we just try harder. Social media creates a constant chase for external validation, while consumer culture pushes material accumulation and status games. We numb out, comply with others' expectations, or scatter our energy just to cope.

Each of these "solutions" actually makes the problem worse. They pull us further away from authentic caring and deeper into reactive frustration. As a result, most of us end up worried about stupid shit while feeling like we can't live a worthwhile life. We're living "fake lives" - caring about what we're told to care about rather than what, or who, actually matters to us.

The Turning Point: From Tasks to Responsibility

To understand our focus—and why it’s often so fragile—it helps to shift our lens to the idea of responsibility. Responsibility, in its deeper sense, raises the stakes. It’s not just about doing a task; it’s about standing for an outcome. That’s a different game.

When we move from thinking in terms of individual tasks to thinking in terms of responsibility, our available capacity shrinks dramatically. Because responsibility isn’t just about what we do - it’s about what we own. We own the outcome, regardless of how predictable the inputs are, how good our intentions were going in or how unfavorable the external conditions turn out to be.

That means we carry not just the execution, but the emotional and cognitive tension that comes with uncertainty:

• Are we doing enough?

• Is this input sufficient to achieve the outcome I care about, in the world as it is?

Responsibility, then, is not a checklist. It’s a posture. An attitude. And it’s a heavy one.

Seen this way, it becomes clear: We can only truly take responsibility for a few things. Not because we don’t care - but because the cost of real ownership is high.

This is where many entrepreneurs struggle. They try to hold responsibility for everything. And it breaks them. In that sense, their experience mirrors a dynamic common in many households. It reflects the well-documented phenomenon of the “mental load”: the often invisible cognitive labor of planning, remembering, and anticipating. While anyone can carry this burden, sociological research has shown it disproportionately falls on women in heterosexual partnerships, even when physical tasks are shared.¹ 

The work may be shared. The responsibility often isn’t.

And this is the deeper issue we rarely name - at work, and at home. We get stuck in task-level conversations, debating who should do what, instead of asking the real question: Who is carrying the weight of responsibility?

To see how this works, consider the story of the rocks, pebbles, and sand in a jar. You’ve probably heard it. A professor fills a jar with large rocks and asks if it’s full. The students say yes. He then adds pebbles, then sand, filling all the gaps. The rocks are our core responsibilities—our foundational relationships, our health, our life's purpose. The pebbles are important tasks. The sand is the endless stream of trivialities.

The lesson we are usually sold is one of optimistic efficiency: if you put the big rocks in first, everything else will fit. But this is a gentle, dangerous lie for our times, because it assumes a finite amount of sand.

In our lives, the supply of sand is infinite. A relentless, digital desert is pouring into our lives every second. The problem isn’t that the jar is full; it’s that it's overflowing. We are not neatly organizing our priorities; we are drowning in a social and professional quicksand of other people's priorities and manufactured urgency.

The challenge, then, is not one of clever packing. It is one of radical filtration. This is the essence of moving from tasks to responsibilities. It is a commitment to the rocks, not an endless management of the sand. When we take true responsibility, the unit of commitment becomes a rock, and a powerful forcing function emerges. The weight of the rocks makes it clear: we can only carry a few.

This clarity brings us to the practical way forward, which involves two deliberate shifts.

Shift one is moving from tasks to responsibility. It is the conscious decision to stop managing the sand and start carrying the rocks. We own the outcome of the rock, regardless of how the inputs change or how external conditions shift. We carry not just the execution, but the emotional and cognitive tension that comes with real ownership.

Shift two tells us how to identify our rocks: we move from asking “what?” to asking “who?” The question “What do I care about?” points us toward an ever-changing landscape of pebbles and sand. The question "Who do I care about?" anchors us to our rocks. This question clarifies what matters. Most people can answer it instinctively—and even our personal goals can be measured against it: Does this goal serve my relationship with myself? Does it enhance my capacity to show up for the people who are my rocks?

By anchoring ourselves in the who, we can finally begin to choose our commitments with intention, focusing only on what truly deserves the weight of our care.

The Mirror of Responsibility

It is frustrating when other people do not care as we expect them to: The barista who doesn't care enough about getting your order right, the colleague who doesn't take ownership over the project report like you would, the partner who doesn't prioritize what you think they should (the laundry), the friend who doesn't reach out as much as they said they would (after 30 years, you’re still organizing all the get-togethers).

But our frustrations often reveal a projection of our own inner tensions. When someone challenges us - suggesting we’re not showing up with our best self or not taking full responsibility - we feel a wave of frustration. That feeling is rarely about the surface-level comment. More often, it's the discomfort of being confronted with an inner tension we haven’t resolved ourselves. We're not actually angry at them; we're angry at ourselves because, deep down, we have lost the ability to choose what matters.

This inner tension often stems from a quiet, nagging doubt: Am I clear on who I want to be? Am I truly living in alignment with what matters to me?

That lack of clarity is more common than we admit. It’s not surprising. From an early age, we’re told who to be and how to behave. Family, school, friends, advertising, social norms - all of them offer templates. Many of them well-meaning. But over time, these external expectations can drown out our own voice. Coming into ourselves - truly growing up - requires peeling back those layers. It’s the lifelong work of adolescence and adulthood: to move from who we were told to be to who we want to become.

But there’s another layer to this. Sometimes, we do know who we want to be. We’ve glimpsed the version of ourselves that feels real and alive. And yet - we hesitate. Not because we’re unclear, but because the gap between our current life and that vision feels too wide. The implications of change are overwhelming. The cost feels too high.

There may be yet another case worth considering. It’s the case of someone who doesn’t struggle with clarity or overwhelm in the usual sense, but instead finds themselves caught in a loop of reactivity. They feel constantly at the effect of others - of other people’s irresponsibility, of systemic demands, of cultural shoulds and musts. They frame their experience as one of being done to, not one of choosing. At first glance, this seems like a lack of agency. But there’s often a hidden mechanism at play: by placing the source of tension outside themselves, they avoid the painful reckoning of asking what truly matters to them. Responsibility, in this frame, is something others are failing to take - not something they could claim for themselves. Ironically, this reactive stance can sometimes be a step forward from numbness. At least there’s energy and frustration. But it also risks becoming a trap - a form of passive resentment that reinforces disempowerment.

In all these cases, we live with dissonance. A quiet, chronic misalignment between how we act and who we hope to be. It shows up as tension, irritation, and fatigue. And sometimes, as misplaced frustration when others hold a mirror to us.

But that mirror, painful as it may be, is also an invitation—an invitation to realign, to begin again.

From Overwhelm to Intentional Care

The shift we need to make begins with a simple but often overlooked recognition:

Overwhelm is not failure. It’s a signal.

A signal that we’re trying to care about too many things - or too many whats - at once.

But instead of treating this as a sign to shut down, we can see it as a productive impulse. An invitation. The emotional evidence that we care - and that we need to care better.

This is where responsibility enters. Not as a burden, but as a filter. A way to move from scattered concern to intentional, sustainable care. Responsibility helps us move away from reacting to others’ expectations - what they think we should care about - and toward reclaiming agency over who we choose to invest in.

And this choice is powerful.

Because when we actively decide who matters to us, we stop living in reaction to how others see us. We stop letting their insecurities shape our actions. Often, when people try to tell us what to do, they’re not really helping us - they’re trying to soothe something unresolved in themselves.

But what if, instead of resisting them, we responded with true care?

What if we chose to invest in others - not by absorbing their demands, but by understanding their needs?

Helping them heal, rather than defending ourselves?

In doing so, we move beyond mere coordination. Beyond the shallow patterns of coexisting or exchanging tasks. We transcend the transactional and step into something generative.

We start living for one another, not just next to one another.

This isn’t about instrumentalizing relationships. It’s not about helping others so that they’ll help us in return. It’s about trusting that when we show up with genuine care, something shifts. That our investment creates the kind of relational field where care can flow back to us, not out of obligation, but out of resonance.

And yes, paradoxically, this is what makes us more effective.

Not because we obsess over the what, but because we anchor ourselves in the who. We tap into a deeper source of energy - one rooted in connection, not in productivity. And it is the quality of this connection, sustained over a lifetime, that ultimately defines a life well-lived.

The Missing Love Language: Taking Responsibility for Each Other

When we consider how to express and nurture this quality of connection, we often turn to frameworks. In popular relationship psychology, for instance, there is the concept of the Five Love Languages, developed by American counselor Gary Chapman. It suggests that people express and receive love in five primary ways: words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, receiving gifts, and physical touch.

These categories are helpful, but they leave something out.

What if love wasn’t only about how we respond to one another - through gestures, support, or affection - but also about how we take responsibility for each other? What if love meant not just reacting to a request, but committing to someone’s well-being, before they even voice what they need?

That’s the missing love language I want to name: the love language of responsibility.

It’s more than an act of service. True responsibility isn’t about doing a task - it’s about choosing to invest in another person’s life. It’s about actively concerning yourself with their well-being, whatever that may entail. Sometimes it means helping in concrete ways. Other times, it means holding space, noticing what they don’t say, or supporting them in becoming who they’re meant to be.

This is not a transactional response to a demand. It’s a proactive commitment. A form of love that says: Your flourishing matters to me, and I will take part in making it possible.

John Mayer captures this shift beautifully in his song Love Is a Verb:

Love is a verb, it ain't a thing
 (…)
 No you can't get through love on just a pile of I-O-Us

Love isn’t a sentiment we store up or a favor we repay. It’s a practice. A posture. A responsibility we carry forward - often without being asked.

And here’s the deeper connection: responsibility and love share structural properties. Both are generative. They don’t diminish when shared. They flow through systems.

When responsibility is held relationally - not as isolated ownership but as mutual commitment - it becomes lighter, not heavier. The same is true of love: it grows as it’s expressed, not depleted. In systems, such as teams, families, and partnerships, both responsibility and love thrive when they move between people, not when they become stuck with one person alone.

This is a more demanding kind of love. But it’s also more human. The longest-running study on adult development - the Harvard Study of Adult Development - has consistently shown that close relationships are the single strongest predictor of happiness and health.¹

And we hear the same truth at the end of life. Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse, spent years listening to the regrets of her patients as they approached the end of their lives. The most common regret? “I wish I had stayed in touch with my loved ones.”²

"Staying in touch" is rarely about sending a birthday message. It’s about presence. About holding someone in mind and acting accordingly. That’s what responsibility, as a love language, really means.

That first healed femur was a sign that someone had chosen to carry the responsibility for another's life. It is the first evidence for human civilization, but it is also the first evidence of love as a verb. The writer Parker Palmer urged us to "let your life speak." A life’s clearest speech appears in the responsibilities it shoulders. Choosing to be responsible for another’s flourishing is how our love becomes the defining statement of our lives. It is, in the end, how to care.

¹ See, for example, Allison Daminger, "The Cognitive Dimension of Household Labor," American Sociological Review 84, no. 4 (2019): 609-33.
² Harvard Study of Adult Development

³ Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying (Hay House, 2012)