ladysprite recently wroteThe word you're looking for is "consideration". To be considered. The root of "considerate". To be the object of another's contemplation and warm regard. What you wrote may be the loveliest evocation of this universal human longing I have read in a long time. When the poets of the last century decried the alienation of man in modern society, that's what they were talking about.
We think of being "considerate" to mean polite in the sense of thinking what would best please another in matters of manners. Yet there is a broader realm of consideration than manners, and that's what you're talking about. You want someone to demonstrate that they've been considering you in your absence.
As you probably know, I spend a lot of time thinking about communities and subcultures and psychology suchlike. One of the things I've learned is that (1) certain kinds of people are much better at the sort of consideration you're talking about than are others, and (2) certain societies/subcultures/communities are much better at promoting that behavior or privileging the people who do it.
One of the things I feel I have learned is this: unfortunately, consideration tends to run inversely to creativity. People who are very creative tend to be really poor at consideration, unless they take it up consciously as a learned discipline. People who are naturally good at consideration often have many fine traits, but they don't tend to be creative people.
There are, of course, exceptions. But this is the way to bet.
The communities and subcultures I've visited which are disproportionately made of creative people tend to have little to no cultural norm of consideration of the type you describe. The irony being that many creative people crave it and thrive on it. But they're by nature really bad about doing it for one another.
They can learn to do it, but it feels unnatural to them. It is often a struggle to remember to do it. It is for this reason that among more "practical" people, creative people are seen as flakey and self-absorbed. Creative people don't usually express that sort of consideration well. They don't throw birthday parties religiously, they forget to send christmas cards, they don't bring casseroles to funeral receptions, they don't look in on recent widows, they don't visit people in hospitals, they don't remember the way every one of their friends takes his coffee, they don't pick things up at garage sales with a "I thought you'd like this so I got it for you". As prosaic as these things seem in comparison to the creative person's occasional inspired and flamboyant gestures, these non-creative considerate people manage to do these things consistently, and they do them meaningfully and heartfully.
You and I live in communities which are overwhelmingly full of creative people. I would even go so far as to say that people who are not primarily identified with being creative, but are primarily identified as considerate, while appreciated for their gift, feel out of place in some of those communities. In some cases, merely like an outsider, but in other cases like a second-class citizen. In a largely creative population, being creative is often esteemed more highly than being considerate; being considerate doesn't get you any social status.
This is, obviously, the flip side from a very traditionalist community -- imagine a church congregation in a small town -- where creativity is at best liked, but more likely tolerated; but the woman who is ever considerate is seen as the salt of the earth, and far more likely to command social status by her virtue or explicit power by being voted into offices.
In light of this, does Carolingia's legendary slowness to give awards look somewhat different?
These demonstrations of care and affection are gracious things that reinforce to our minds that we belong, that we are seen by others as belonging, that we are with them in their thoughts. Without these gestures, we wonder if we belong, or are merely tolerated; we become insecure that we are merely among, not with. When we initiate all gestures, we begin to feel that we are in a hall of mirrors.
One of the things which effects whether such gestures of consideration are norms in a culture, is the firmness of boundaries around units of social organization. The more firm those boundaries -- the more clear whether or not someone is "in" or "out" of a community, a clan, a household, a family, a tribe, or any social institution -- the more likely gestures of consideration are normal and expected.
The reason for this is that if one grants that one has a responsibility to demonstrate that consideration to others, one needs to know there is a reasonable place to stop. For instance, I couldn't possibly keep up with sending a birthday card to every Carolingian, much less throw them all surprize parties once a year.
But if I do that for some and not for all, where do I draw the line? What are the social ramifications for trying to choose whom you will do this for and whom you will not? What if A, B, and C all think D deserves a birthday surprize party, but only A thinks B deserves a birthday surprize party?
And if there are no boundaries of who is "in" and gets the full recognition of a right to consideration, how can you control the number of people you have a social responsibility to? Knowing that if you say "I will try to be considerate of every person in this group" and that group may grow to any number of people, how can you keep it from becoming a full time job?
Many creative people think it anathema to have social boundaries, to have an "in" and an "out" of any social organization. They are welcome to order their affairs so, but it has a practical consequence. Highly porous social boundaries discourage gestures of consideration as a social norm. (That is actually but one practical consequence; there are others.)
In reaction, often within such a highly porous group, subgroups form within the whole which have very hard-to-permeate boundaries. From newsgroups and public email lists, private email lists. From SCA branches, Households. Sometimes the impermeable subgroups are formal and official; sometimes they're informal and unrecognized -- cliques.
With gestures of consideration discouraged, a sense of belonging is harder to cultivate. Thus it can be that in the groups with the lowest barriers to entry, the most wide-open arms, that there can be the most wide-spread insecurity of whether or not one really belongs.
So what to do?
For you, I have two practical paths to recommend. One is to form a household-equivalent. The other is to create a mechanism and discipline for doing gestures of consideration, and try to both follow and promulgate them.
The first is straight forward enough. Find a bunch of people who share your values, and propose what you want to do. Talk about consideration. Call it a "birthday collective" or something, if you like. Form a group specifically to address the problem. Presuming it's as well stocked with creative people as most our social circles are, you might want to generate really specific statements of expectation, so people know what they need to do.
The second would be to do something like put the names of all your friends into a sack and once a (unit of time) you draw one forth and do something for that person.
Actually, you might ask each of those friends for a physical token with their name on it, which you could put into your sack. Heck, if it catches on, we can all start trading little personal baubles.
The more virtual might prefer a computer program, which picks a name at random and says "Today, do something nice for X---".
But aside from advising the individual, I recommend that any community think very hard about how it might make sure that naturally considerate people are at home there, yet can co-exist with creative people. That can be an enormously hard balance to effect, and I'm quite sure I don't yet know how to do it."
