When you are physically immortal you care for other people in a completely different way than when you are not physically immortal. You love when people around you become alive. You love when they all of a sudden do something new that pleases them and makes them more vibrant, more charming, more interesting, brings them more money and simply makes them happier. You care for them in a way that you feel better and happier when they feel better and happier.
At the same time you have to stay away from all the ‘old fashioned’ caring. You have to stay away from loving them so much that you would be happy to give your life for them. No matter how much you care and love a person you know you sabotage what you have with them when you give your life for them. You know it’s a killer when you give up something you love yourself so much in the name of loving the other person.
When you are physically immortal you know you have to stay away from caretaking, sacrificing, compromising because you know it’s a show stopper for real intimacy. You know that when you ‘with the other person will be going down the drain pretty quickly with the compromising and sacrificing and caretaking. You know that all of a sudden you find yourself resentful, controlling and jealous and you may might ask yourself ‘How did I get here?’ Most people feel like they don’t know why the ‘bad’ happens but it’s guaranteed that sacrificing, compromising and caretaking will make you feel boxed in and struggling and unhappy with the one person you cared so much for.
You have to stay away from doing things for others. The kind of things that you think they need so much from you but when you do them they never seem to make the big difference. No matter how much you do, the other person’s happiness never stays. Because, after all, it’s guaranteed that what you think the other person would need to be happy is absolutely not what they need. They only know what makes them happy and they are the only one’s who can make it successfully happen on the long run. The only thing you can do is encourage them in it.
You have to stay away from protecting others. When you are physically immortal you need to be vulnerable and open with your feelings facing a situation straight ahead. At the same time you need to stay away from ‘I don’t say everything because I don’t want to hurt you’. When you are physically immortal you know that the other person will feel your body language, they will feel that you are holding something back and it will cause separation and more pain in the long run.
When you are physically immortal you know that it’s better to face pain instead of avoiding it. You encourage the other person to walk through it so that they can be free of it. At the same time you know you have to do what is the hardest: You can’t do any of the walking for them. You know the other person needs to make their changes. If you try to do anything for them you are only hindering them from succeeding. If a person you care about struggles with making money, you know that you can give them some money to help them over a hump. But if you pay their bills all the time, they might never overcome their blocks and you have doomed them to a life that will never feel really prosperous no matter how much money you give them.
When you are physically immortal you have these immense ‘caring’ feelings for others because you want them to live so freely and so abundantly and so rich and so fulfilled and so happy and so well in every way. But you know that you can’t do any of the living for them. You can only do your own living. You know that no matter how much you feel for them what feels abundant for you is guaranteed not the same for them. What makes you happy guaranteed doesn’t make the person you care so much about happy and you have to stay out of their way.
When you are physically immortal you have to stay out of the other person’s way but you can never disconnect from them. It’s the weirdest feeling. You need to enjoy the other person for who they are and for what they do, especially when you feel so completely different and you can’t go into ‘independent’ mode. You have to keep feeling the other person and their differences and you need to be open with your feelings and personal and vulnerable.
Basically, when you are physically immortal, you need to stand on your own feet with others who stand on their own feet. It’s completely the opposite of what we learn when we grow up.