Like actually caring. taking action and making changes are good. But only if it's realistic or if the person can afford to, monetarily and emotionally/physically. I get extremely upset when people are like "oh wow look at the news, don't you care?". I can't care. I can feel for those people, and imagine how they may have felt and acknowledge how terrible things are. But I don't know how caring is going to help. Like you said about an attack in the Middle East. Like of course it's terrible, I'll probably see it and cry to myself much later. But I can't catch a flight, go over, help physically heal the people, give all my money to the families. Most people when they do that or ask if you "care". Really just don't want to be alone in their emotions over events like that. "Oh my god no that's terrible I can't believe someone would do that". And suddenly they feel better that they're not alone in suffering. Hopefully not misquote this or to put the words into a different context. But the sentence of
Empathy doesnt require any action beyond feeling ... caring requires action.
I think is a good example of the situation above. Sometimes people are very empathetic and need to not be alone when they see stuff like that. And I get that people need that but sometimes it doesn't make sense to "care" in that definition. The disconnect is that most people don't associate "caring" with requiring action. They think "caring and empathy" are the same. And IMO, they're not. I believe more strongly in the thinking that Miss_Takes provided. It's better in some situations to empathize or ignore it, being expected to care about something outside of one's control just doesn't make sense. Honestly I've just seen so much, maybe I'm desensitized to it. Like there's a reason I don't watch the news or anything anymore. I'm already not doing well, I don't need to know about every horrible event that happens each day in the world. So yeah overburdening yourself with issues out of your control that you can't properly "care" for is a massive detriment to oneself. However something much smaller and local, like if you see a stranger fall over, or maybe can't afford a cup of coffee or something, maybe even going as far as to give someone a free meal or something then yeah sure go for it. I think family will always naturally come first for me at least, but the other thing is that you'll probably never get close enough if they're a "stranger" to know what they really need. Like someone on the street might not need more money or another meal, but rather affordable housing, a job, proper healthcare. And at the end of the day, often times, we as singular person with problems of our own, can't afford to fix someone's entire life, whether it's because of finances, energy, or other problems, but can rather only offer empathy and try to comfort others.
