On charity, Sir Thomas Browne and why not self-care
September 19, 2025
I recently, as in four days ago, changed something elemental in my life.
I have a new goal and a new regular commitment, both ample and set atop an already perilous stack of wants, needs and obligations.
Something had to go. It’s math.
More specifically, it’s calculus. And maybe a little set theory… (where are my math nerds at?). The point is, it’s complicated.
At a certain juncture in a ‘mature’ life, moving any one piece of the puzzle can be not only disorienting, but potentially destructive. Sure, we all learn new things, do new things, try to follow our curiosities when we can. But, habits make the world go ‘round.
Essential to my sanity and strategy, for the last several years, has been my practice of writing morning pages. Early morning pages. Every day, a single 8.5 x 11” in a lined Moleskine, black hard cover. Small print and with a Blackwing pencil.
My husband brings me a coffee at 6a, the house is silent but for the night sounds coming through the open french doors (even through the Michigan winter months—we’re nuts like that).
The only light around me, the loose outlines of stars on the ceiling from a nightlight, held-over from our younger days with younger kids, and from the booklight that illuminates the page; my hand holding the pencil, holding my words.
I sit in bed, my body and mind coming to temp, and I write.
It’s been a sacred time. A sacred practice. Focused and exclusive of the larger physical world, while unbounded of the metaphysical.
If it sounds lovely, that’s because it was. Third singular past.
If there were ever a time it felt completely inappropriate, reckless even, to make any manner of changes in our lives, now would be it.
We’re particularly unstable, as a global community, both alike other years/other eras, and unique to this moment. As if in the air we collectively breathe, that real presence of frailty feels internal, a part of us.
It’s also a time that demands change, even in the absence of any assurances that risk will yield reward.
And while I primarily work with creatives, a population predisposed for challenging the status quo while also feeling paralyzed by their need to in some ways rely on it, none of us are ignorant to the constant shifting of the earth beneath us and the immobilization it creates.
Sure, we’re doing what we can with our anger, our sadness, frustration and fear. But often, and I write this with zero amount of judgment, many of us are doing so with the least amount of personal risk.
Let me be clear, I’m not condoning nor suggesting we do the biggest, scariest, most earth-quaking thing, and immediately. What I’m interested in, however, is our examination—together—of our own individual opportunities for personal and purposeful change. It’s not the size, the scope even, but the potential value. And it begins within.
If we can’t build our own lives the way we want, the way we need, how can we expect everyone, anyone, else to do so? Cliches abound, though have only proliferated (as they often do) out of some unassailable truth.
Like an earworm of a song, I can’t stop thinking about a particular proverb, which isn’t actually a proverb at all. Ringing in my mind:
“Charity begins at home.”
There’s something here that connects, some vibration or timbre that matches what seems to happen when we attend to ourselves in such an intimate and compassionate way. When taking our own reigns.
But… charity??
As many are aware, the very definition of charity has been misconstrued and misappropriated to favor certain political perspectives, particularly in the last fifty years. From the love and benevolence of humankind to the voluntary giving of help, typically in the form of money, the lede has been buried slowly over time; imprisoned and forgotten in a remote location.
This concept, this idiom, is in reality a mere snippet of a longer quote from a sprawling 75,000-word manuscript, Religio Medici by Sir Thomas Browne, published unauthorized in 1643 and gaining wide distribution before becoming an unlikely European bestseller.
The complete assertion is this:
“Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world: yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner”.
Browne was writing through self-examination, working earnestly to reconcile his christian faith with his medical profession. All of Religio Medici is an elongated exercise of a man organizing his thoughts, feeling, beliefs and intentions, for the purpose of a deeper understanding from which to operate to his potential.
It stands to be clarified then, that Browne was writing of ‘charity’ as a theological virtue, non-monetary and completely apolitical. Charity, in his mind and beliefs, was the nexus of a love for God, one’s neighbor, and oneself. Love was interchangeable with charity, interpreted and perpetuated from original greek into modern english language texts.
His assertion was a familiar one at the time, that love of one’s neighbor was intertwined with love of one’s self and of God. The virtue of love, of charity, had three integral parts, and was a requirement for happiness.
While I’m not a practicing (or non-practicing) Christian, nor do I follow any particular religious doctrine, I rather like all this. I like it because I see it and feel it’s effects in my own life, and exemplified similarly in others.
There’s a bit of intellectual yoga to be practiced here first. Because, if we reconcile our current manipulation of charity with the archaic, we have what might resemble self-love or self-care. This isn’t what I’m after.
Self-love, as we know, is a concept and practice that’s been twisted beyond recognition; not unlike charity, hijacked and commodified to the point of becoming something else entirely. Regardless, self-love is essentially an acceptance of and kindness toward one’s self, less action and more mindset. Self-care is a nursemaid for self-love, so is similarly intended to support, nurture and protect.
Charity, its range kept local, is more active. It’s an effort of giving.
It’s non-transactional, inherently kind and without judgement, and it’s a thing done versus believed.
When we act charitably to ourselves, first and foremost, we’re not just assuaging (important) the pain (real) of being human, we’re providing compassionate service to our essential need to thrive.
Browne having written Religio Medici at all was an effort of charity.
Considered in it’s entirety, and within the context of it’s originally unauthorized publication, it was a work of reflective consideration. Browne wrote it seemingly of himself, for himself, and others—a self-portrait in service of his own humanity.
And, by the way, he did so in the midst of intense global conflict and change.
When we see our community suffering, when we see, hear, feel danger around us, there are some natural tendencies at play; we all know them, fight, flight, freeze or fawn. Intensified to the maximum levels by breaking news, constant notifications, social media, all modes of intrusive enshittification, our individual predispositions dictate which of these reactions take priority.
‘The stress response occurs when the demands of the environment are greater than our perceived ability to cope with them.’
Check.
What doesn’t come as naturally during times of intense fear and stress is the cultivation of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. It can feel deeply selfish to attend to ourselves in the time and effort intensive ways that stimulate our personal development.
The world’s on fire and we’re navel gazing??
Indulgent. Ignorant. Heartless and disrespectful of material facts.
So we direct our attentions outward, right? We focus on what we can do for those whose suffering clearly exceeds our own. We fight for the injustices, flee from the dangers, freeze from overwhelm and/or fawn for the favor that feels like safe ground.
Outward charity alone can become an unintended zero-sum game—an avalanche of reactivity that leaves us sacrificed for others’ potential gain.
When I sacrificed my early morning ritual, that exquisite hour of scritch-scratching my way into creative consciousness, it felt unfair. Unfair to do it at all and also unfair to be so burned up about it.
But this is only half the equation. I also gave myself something, not in return or exchange, but in service.
That single hour became two, an inviolate space and span from which to do deeper and more intentional writing. Writing that had previously been scattered through school days, around client sessions, in between loads of laundry, stuffed into cramped pockets of availability.
We might call this prioritizing, but it’s more meaningful than that. Spiritual even.
When we give to others, we’re doing so with the intention of supporting their livelihood, perhaps even their survival. We’re also doing it because we see in their existence our own, recognizing an essential right to thrive amidst the random turns of fate.
When we give to ourselves—of our own attention, singular and generous—it’s also an act of charity. It’s love of our own humankind, humanness, and all the good that can result.
We can’t simply expect to thrive because we’re safe, nor can we gift the balance of our energy away because of stress, either perceived or real.
We can actively fortify our lives, supplying our spirit, our gifts and our most soul-affirming goals with what they need to flourish.
When we direct our compassion inward, when we begin where we begin, we can operate from a position of even greater strength of action and availability of resource.
Our gifts to ourselves become gifts to the world.
Bree Stilwell 