On Being Well

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:

Thanks for defining something that was nudging the edges of my consciousness but had previously refused to enter. My own 67-year-old being is grateful to look forward to activities that need doing, and I have timidly crept into public writing as part of that expanding being. I take my lead from my 94-year-old dad who is still alive, alert and curious about the world. He embodies your definition of well-being.

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.