All Consuming Cura

The name of this piece is All Consuming Cura.

This name is taken from the Roman myth for the goddess that created humanity, and its subsequent derivation for Care.

In the last few years, we have seen the tragedy of forced human migration, evolving, and pending ecologic disasters. We are living through a pandemic and seeing a move away from science and an entrenchment of tribal nativism. It seems that there are an equal number of people looking for solutions as people are making things worse. At the same time much of the population is only peripherally aware of what is happening and what could be lost.

An observer could try to work out all the individual motivations involved, greed, power, apathy, and even a simple lack of understanding. All these emotional displays are outcomes of something larger. Something we have either lost or never really understood. In fact, even trying to understand the motivation, or the preponderance of which outcome is acting most, leads to the inevitable conclusion that we cannot affect the larger world, and we end up normalizing and accepting all these outcomes as inevitable. I believe that underneath much of what we see is lack of care.

As I was trying to depict Cura/care as a concept, I was forced to realize I did not understand the concept myself. It seemed that I had taken care for granted all my life.

On the surface, Care seems like an extremely basic concept. You either do or you do not because it is easy to confuse caring and acts of kindness, or the opposite, a feckless selfish irresponsibility. For example, I did this good deed therefore I care. A kind of quid pro quo world of Black and White, a sea of darkness interspersed with acts of kindness. It does seem like the world is a sea of selfishness interspersed with acts of individual heroism. Again, Black, and White.

I decided to research what other works there were on this topic and found concepts as far back as Plato. This work is an expression and an exploration of what I understand about the concept of Care.

 Like many other things in our lives, experience shapes our reality. A reality built on the things we have lived through and endured. An experience of things that worked and the things that failed. However, all our experiences are not weighed the same. The depths of our pain and sorrow and the peaks of joy and triumph overwhelm and hold a much bigger place in our perception. These experiences often subvert the our more subtle and more colorful experiences.

This is what feeds and constructs our Black and White concepts of consequence and reward. Our roots, our biases, are embedded in our past and feed our current mind on how we should feel about current events and therefore drive our perceptions of good and bad.

The leaves, branches, and the feathers you see here are all experimental concepts that worked but broke in some way, or I did not in the end like.

Cura was fed from the experience gained by the trial and error or happenstance of the foliage.

 The foliage of our experience is fed through our roots, our perception filters. The branches of new growth (red/green stone) are different but retain the same flowers (something of the past).

If we decide to protect ourselves by withdrawing and seek to prevent unfamiliar outcomes, we become stuck in the memory of our experiences. The challenging memories take on a much more significant role in our lives. The effort to protect oneself becomes ALL. It is here that the baser nature of our being takes hold and drives ALL. The easier more certain path of self-aggrandizement paves the road to our reduction. The darkness is always in the background.  

The reverse can be true. If we decide to reach out, whether the outcome is good or bad, our resilience to adversity grows. It is with that resilience to life's ambiguity that we grow. It is the experience of that effort that creates an understanding of colourful possibilities that come with the understanding experience brings. It is with that taken risk, that comes the chance of returned care, and the creation of blissful experiences that will be remembered.

The wings represent the receiver of care. There is an obvious relationship between the giver and the receiver.  The stone used to create Cura’s the face, hand, roots and flowers are the same used to create the feathers of the Child flying off.  

The extended hand represents hope and effort. The hand is tied to the roots of the past. The branch around the arm is the same colour as the root, it is an old experience. It is the old experience that ties the hand that must bend for something new to occur.  

The feather in the open hand symbolizes the risk taken and the returned care given. 

The black and white noise or ambiguity is always in the background but with this effort of care, we build a nuanced world of colorful possibilities.

Only when that risk is taken do our relationships grow. As our confidence grows, our security with ourselves and the world grows. This confidence and security drives change to the core of our being. This is true for both caregiver and receiver. Both must engage in respectful acts for care to exist.

 The child-parent relationship is the perfect analog. All that we are, the good and the bad passes on to our children. Neither parent nor child can survive if both do not positively care and respect each other.

 It is only when our children become reasoning adults and spread their wings to fly away from our care, do we understand the way our past has shaped us. We spend all our lives protecting them and teaching them basics skills. Only in the last few moments do we realize how our experience could help them and we search inside ourselves to pass on our experience to them.

 That time comes and goes by much quicker than we realize. There is never enough time for us to understand our own experience so that we can process it properly. For that to occur there must be a life of ‘care-full’ and respectful past relationships. Relationships filled with trigger points that force us to review, understand and reprioritize all the things that we think we know. That is the only way to pass on the colour of one’s life experience.

 Therefore, the basic Human question then becomes do I struggle to just exist or do I grow. The collection of all these individual decisions is what makes us Human and therefore the collective IMPACT of individual Human decisions makes Humanity what we see today.

 All this implies that if we want a better place for ourselves and our children in this world, we have a responsibility to reach out and care positively in the world. If we are on the receiving end of a ‘care-full’ act, we have a responsibility to treat it with the respect with which it is given. Care cannot exist without the respect of the person receiving the care or the person giving it. This is the difference between care and a simple kindness.

The colour between the Child and Cura feeds the heart-stone which cascades down to our roots through the heart-stone and cascades to the roots of our experience.

It is this new way of looking at our experience that changes our roots, or our perception filters.

However, the simplicity and expedience of our Black and White environment is always there ready to reassert itself. The war of Black and White continues throughout all our lives

Such is Care, the continuing desire to invest in that in which we release to the world, be it our children our charity, our words, our joy even our anger. The direction of that care is what makes a person selfish or altruistic. The type of emotion is what makes a person aggressive or peaceful and it is the outcome of care that is judged as constructive or destructive.  

This is All Consuming Cura.