Take Care

Several years ago, I was caught up in a crisis that was far less dire than the Coronavirus crisis that we’re all in the midst of now. At the time, it was assuredly a Dire Crisis that consumed a great percentage of my waking thoughts, at least when I wasn’t doing my actual job … which was related in subject-area content to the Dire Crisis, so there were reminders all over the place.

I wasn’t paranoid about viral material, though. Or if I was, it was the kind comprised of ill-considered social media remarks that led to exploding comment sections and the like. Good times.

Anyway, I was corresponding with a fine friend of mine, and a platitude escaped my typing fingers. It was well-meant, well-intended, correctly-spelled, and the sentiment was never lost in translation. My friend knew what I meant.

“Take care,… -Rob”

But I had a moment, after hitting “send” on my eMail machine, of … –yeah, that seems shallow.

So I created a new message, same eMail address, and continued typing, in one fluid motion.

“Upon further reflection, ‘take care’ is a soulless phrase which I should ban from my lexicon forever. Sorry. I really meant, it’s always good to talk to you – and of all the things in the world that can change, that one never should.”

It took hardly a few minutes before I got a reply back.

My fine friend replied by insisting that when I used that phrase … and when a few other people we knew used it … it wasn’t heard as a “throw away”. Instead:

“I hear it as ‘be sure to take care in everything you do; be sure to take care with all you experience; life is not meant to race through – live it with care.’”

My fine friend went on to suggest that it was always good to hear my voice, over the phone or in print or in electronic pixels; and to realize that I was willing to just let my fine friend ramble and vent and all that. “One day,” my fine friend suggested, “I shall sit quietly and listen, and will ‘take care.’”

The response was more eloquent than I was able to be, in that moment, and I’ve held onto it for a long time. In the years between that crisis and this one, I’ve thought of it and thought perhaps it would be useful to describe the exchange to people. Maybe it could be helpful somehow, I’ve thought.

Well, no time like the present.

Take care.

Clearly, first and foremost, that means keep that ol’ six-foot social distance physically. Wash your hands. Don’t go to the freakin’ crowded freakin’ beach and mingle with all the other stupid freakin’ people who, if they think at all, clearly think to themselves, “it’s a free country and I can do what I want.” Wash your darn phone, too, by the way.

But perhaps priority #1A ought to be, take care of yourself and the people you love. And the people you like a lot. And the people who fall under those categories but whom somehow you don’t connect with on a regular basis, even though they deserve it.

As it happens, a few days ago, I spent an afternoon writing quick notes, most of them on the Facebook allegedly-private-messaging service, to a number of people who fit those descriptions. (And I’m about to launch a few more messages into the electronic ether, so if you haven’t gotten yours yet, my fingers only type so fast … although at this point, I’ve got more time for it, …so.)

The responses were either immediate or close. And they seemed a bit startled, if happily startled.

Which might mean that, among the other good things that might come out of the current horrible frightening time, we might re-learn how to take care in everything we do … to take care with all we experience … to keep in mind that life is not meant to be raced through … and to live life with care.

So, dear reader (dear readers, I hope!) … here’s hoping you’re doing as well as possible … that you’re hanging in there and staying well through this current Dire Crisis, and that you’ll continue to do so after this is all over.

Yesterday, I had a different fine friend of mine use the Contact section of this blog to re-establish contact after quite some time of being apart. I suspect we each had lost track of the other’s contact information; and unhelpfully, we live on opposite sides of the planet … but she made the effort. Which, I now think, is why this whole thought re-occurred to me:

Take care.