Idea and Action: Sharing an inspiring quote and links to the original source

Submitted by:  John Walker

"Idea: to share this quote and link to original source."  (He also shared the picture above.)

[The quote is the following:]

"...caregiving is...a defining moral practice. It is a practice of empathic imagination, responsibility, witnessing, and solidarity with those in great need. It is a moral practice that makes caregivers, and at times even the care-receivers, more present and thereby fully human.
If the ancient Chinese perception is right that we are not born fully human, but only become so as we cultivate ourselves and our relations with others—and that we must do so in a threatening world where things often go terribly wrong and where what we are able to control is very limited—then caregiving is one of those relationships and practices of self-cultivation that make us, even as we experience our limits and failures, more human. It completes (not absolutely, but as a kind of burnishing of what we really are—warts and all) our humanity. And if that Chinese perspective is also right (as I believe it is), when it claims that by building our humanity, we humanize the world, then our own ethical cultivation at the very least fosters that of others and holds the potential, through those relationships, of deepening meaning, beauty, and goodness in our experience of the world." - Arthur Kleinman

Source:
http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/07/on-caregiving
http://harvardmag.com/pdf/2010/07-pdfs/0710-25.pdf
http://harvardmagazine.com/sites/default/files/Lancet_Catastrophe-and-caregiving.pdf
http://harvardmagazine.com/sites/default/files/Lancet_Caregiving.pdf