In praise of care

I’ve begun to sign off my emails with ‘take care’. My automated reflex is usually a half-baked ‘best’ tacked onto the body copy but these days I pause before I press send. The valediction is no longer a throwaway line. I mean it. I’m asking you to take care.

Take care in how you look after yourself (generously); in how you move through the world (sparingly); in how you interact with others (remotely). To take care is to act with intention and thoughtfulness but also delicacy. To ask that we take care is to ask that we hold ourselves and others, gently.