Sunday 5 August 2018

WHEN TALK OF DUTY HELPS

'We often use "care" or "carer" for people who would once have thought that what they were doing in say, looking after incapacitated relatives, was a duty. To call the act of changing someone's soiled underclothing an act of caring can make you feel as if you should be doing it because you want to do it, whereas the idea that you're doing it because it's your duty makes it more impersonal and therefore - to my mind, anyway - a lighter burden. It leaves you free to dislike what you are doing while still feeling you are doing the right thing in doing it.' 
John Lanchester in Jennifer Senior, All Joy and No Fun, p.248.