Caring in Our Time: A Love Letter to Friendship

A friend of mine was recently telling me about her retreat into crime novels as a haven from escalating anxiety about current affairs. It made my escape of choice - binge-watching the more superficial end of Netflix shows - seem rather less erudite, which made me chuckle. This was all over a voice note of course, the asynchronous communication aide for busy people in different places. The chuckle echoed through my day though, and the distance between us, a kernel of escapism. Reflecting on it afterwards, I also see this escapism as a clear demonstration of a way through the violence and despair. A simple act of laughter, of friendship, of care, of connection.

This week I have been reading and thinking about care, something which is both deeply personal and deeply political. While we may instinctively think of care as something confined to the intimate, personal relationships of family, there is a growing interest in what an ethics and a morality of care could mean for tackling global challenges of inequality, discrimination, violence, and ecological disaster. Inspired by the work and ideas of many great feminist scholars, I began to look around at examples of the personal turned political, of the glimpse of possibilities that we could organise ourselves differently if we centred care.

“I am grateful for you” are words exchanged regularly with a friend of mine. She solo parents, works long hours, sharpens her intellect in the classrooms in which she teaches, and every day makes it work. Even on days where she feels like it is not working at all. “I love you” are words I exchange with another friend of mine who also solo parents, innovates, creates, and inspires in all the corners of life she occupies, even when the light doesn’t quite reach into those spaces. These friendships are among my most longstanding and close. But there are other friendships which sustain threads of my life and generate important connections. My neighbour who is always ready to share a cup of tea and chat about children and cooking, the warm smiles of choir buddies I don’t yet know too well but who always seem pleased to see me.

Care is a practice. It generates solidarity, trust, hope. By articulating our gratitude for each other, my colleague and I practice an idea of working relationships which suggests we are not individuals competing for recognition, a promotion, a grant, although we could be described that way. Instead, we practice care in a way which connects in our flourishing. By openly expressing our love for each other, my friend and I recognise that the structures in which we are living our lives are not structures which tend to foster our wellbeing and self-care. We offer it to each other instead, in recognition that it should be there. My neighbour and I sit and share tea in a village divided by cross-border working, unequal access to the housing market and vastly different salaries. But we drink tea together anyway and generate the kinds of inter-personal connections that have seen us work together in community action over pavements and bike lanes through the narrow streets which we share.  

Care is work. One of the dangers of valorising the self-sacrificing elements of care – oh look at her she manages so well despite it all, oh look at him juggling and putting himself last – is that we do not recognise the way in which care is also work and can deplete us. Shirin Rai has written a book on the human costs of caring in which she says, among other things, that care is embedded in systems of governance which determine who can care, when, how, and with what costs to themselves. When I go to work in another country this is facilitated by the care work of others – a nanny who earns far less than I do, a husband who is ignored whenever a neighbour asks me, and only me, what happens to the kids when I jet off. Research I have conducted with Eleanor Gordon on care work, peace, and employment, has found that when care is not taken seriously individuals, organisations, and societies suffer. Care is not something to be taken for granted and is certainly not something confined to the private sphere.  

Care is political. Avisahi Margalit writes about caring as the centre of thick ethical relationships, relationships which she associated with our nearest and dearest. But what if we extended these thick ethical relationships to those further away? What if our politics was structured by an ethics of care? What if we spoke loudly about the inequalities which our intimate acts of caring for friends and family were compensating for? I’m not suggesting that in a society of equality and social justice caring would no longer be necessary, far from it. I am suggesting that in a society where we see care for ourselves, care for our friends and families, and care for others more distant from us, as mutually constitutive we could more easily imagine a social pact which was inclusive and ethical.  

This week, as with many weeks, simple acts of friendship have been transformative. I am grateful for all my friendships in the many different forms they take. I am grateful for the connections and for the support. Most of all I am grateful for the reminder that what often pass by as everyday acts of thoughtfulness and connection are actually roadmaps for an extended network of care which can powerfully disrupt entrenched inequalities. We need to ask ourselves why we care, why we don’t care, who cares, and whose care matters.  

Where I retreat to – a chuckle in a voice note to a friend – can be a starting point on that roadmap of care.

February 2025