The following post is a re-post from a few years ago, which I've been thinking about
since yesterday. For some reason, it has crept back into my
consciousness as one of my all-time favorites to write. If you've been in a Walgreens in the past year or so, you will notice they say "Be Well" as they hand you your change. I like that, even though it's obviously been handed down to them from on high. It is somehow so much better than "Have a good day." This post is directly related to that, and I think it is
perfect for the beginning of the new year.
On my sister's blog, she was talking about her work at Wabash College
and how she's co-editing the monthly magazine this month and the theme
is "Wellness". I imagine it's about exercise and eating right and all
that, but I have no idea. It hasn't been published yet. But the guy my
sister is working with on this magazine wrote in to Garrison Keillor, the longtime host of
A Prairie Home Companion,
who always ends his public radio program
The Writer's Almanac segments with "Be well, do good
work, and keep in touch," and asked him this:
Dear Mr. Keillor,
As longtime fan of A Prairie Home Companion and a daily listener to
The Writer's Almanac,
I find both comfort and encouragement in your fatherly sign-off for the
latter program: Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.
But I've often wondered what you mean when you say, "Be well." How do you define well-being? What do you do to achieve it?
Steve C.
Wabash College
I love Mr. Keillor's response here:
You're a college guy and I'm an old writer, Steve,
so we're looking at this from different angles. I'm more aware of
decline and decrepitude than you possibly could be. I'm at the age when
people tell me, "You're looking good" in that tone of voice that says
"for a guy your age." For me, well-being has a lot to do with forward
motion. I need to have deadlines, a list of projects, people who rely on
me, some ambition on my back like an outboard motor. Good health is
good, of course, and you don't want big black splotches showing up on
the CAT scan, but my sense of well-being comes from waking up each day
with work to do. It was different when I was in college: the work was
imposed by teachers and so much of it seemed irrelevant, make-work, a
lot of pointless exercises. What you hope for in life is a sense of a
calling, a vocation, which simply means that one goes to one's work
gratefully, not out of fear or habit but with a whole heart. It's the
whole-heartedness that makes for well-being. Everyone has to live with a
degree of doubt and restlessness, but there's nothing like enthusiasm,
especially when you're 67. I have a plumber in my house right now,
working to repair a pipe that broke when it froze and rebuild part of a
jerry-rigged heating system, and it is so clear to me that this man
loves his work. So does my internist. So do the women who care for my
ancient mother. So do the musicians on the radio show and the writers of
the Almanac. Thanks for your note.
One of the comments left by a reader was particularly moving:
I
try my hardest to be that plumber. And I really do get up out of bed
each day with a sense of duty, and for that I am eternally grateful.
I've told the kids that I never have a day where I don't want to come in
to work, and this isn't because I'm afraid of what would happen if I
didn't. It's because of the things the kids say that make me bite my lip
to keep from laughing. The look in their eyes when they finally
understand something, and the amount of growth I see in each of them
throughout the ten months we spent together.
I still
remember my
high school Health teacher, Mrs. Craft, making the first question on
every test, what was the true definition of health? Of course, we all
knew the correct answer: "The state of
complete physical, emotional, and social well-being, and not merely the
absence of disease or infirmity." By that definition, Mrs. Craft was one
of the healthiest people I have ever known. She was an Army nurse during the
Korean War, and often told us stories from her time in service, of
getting in trouble for laughing while at attention on Coco Beach and of
some of the unfortunate things she saw in life during wartime. She was
about five feet two inches, had a smoke-addled voice that she used at
full capacity, and she had the respect of everyone. She had lived a full
life--and seemed to have loved and embraced every minute of it.
The
other night after karate competition practice, which was here at
Woodbrook, I was walking back to my classroom with a few of my former
students and one of the other Senseis. We ran into Mr. Vahle, a fellow
teacher who was and is my mentor, who was there with his family. He had a
huge smile on his face to see the boys (all of whom are in high school
right now and were his students as well) and gave them big hugs and
looking them in the eye and asking them how they're doing. The youngest
of the boys, Matt, now a freshman at Purdue who has been a "little old man" since he
was in the second grade, came into my classroom, smiled, and said about Mr. Vahle, "That's the ultimate success--to be happy with your lot in life."
I hope each of my students grows up to be happy with his or her lot in life--that's the kind of success I want for each of them.
