Joe describes meeting people who have dedicated their lives to caring for a dying parent or a severely disabled child — and you can spot them from a mile away. They’ve gotten soft. Their hearts are enormous. They’ve used the experience of caring to sandpaper their edges, dissolving themselves into something strong and non-rigid.
The opposite trajectory is the caretaker: getting more neurotic, more spun up, more isolated, losing friends over the years. Whether you’re softening or hardening over time is the long-term diagnostic for which camp you’re in.
“Is it softening you up? Is your heart getting bigger? Is there less resentment? Or is there more resentment and more feeling of trappiness and more spinning?”
This is a powerful retrospective test. You can’t always catch caretaking in the moment — the rationalizations are too sophisticated. But zoom out to years: are you becoming more open or more rigid? More connected or more isolated? The trajectory doesn’t lie.
Related Concepts
- Resentment is the indicator of caretaking
- Gentleness accelerates growth
- Boundaries increase capacity to love
- Caretaking is a strategy to feel love through managing others’ happiness