Care is primordial and exists within us. We feel this care in us when we see someone suffering. We feel it emerge from us when we help someone, and when someone helps us. Care is essential to our human development, though it needs our arms, legs, and understanding to interact with the world.

The care within us is elusive, yet we should seek this care so we can better understand it. Interestingly, a framework of seeking already exists within us, and this framework is a seeking of the divine. This book shows how such seeking can occur through contemplation. Many philosophers and theologians throughout history have searched for the divine through contemplation. However, contemplation has challenges. Internal and external noises distract us from contemplation, and society and others influence it. These challenges affect our independent judgments about the world around us, including those related to care. Such challenges also impede our care, essentially constraining it.

We should be responsible for nurturing care, and our actions should demonstrate that responsibility. According to Aristotle, we can act or not act, yet our actions should be performed in the right way. Many theologians and philosophers assert that our actions should not objectify or dominate. Instead, we must be responsible. Accordingly, we must take responsibility for care, not by constraining or controlling it, but by enabling care to emerge from us without constraint. This responsibility of care is crucial because it directly determines our ability to be human.