A good salutation requires a bit of thought: are we familiar enough or too familiar with the individual we’re addressing to use dear, should we use first or last names, and if so, how about honorifics? Most of us don’t have to pause over this; and even if we should, we don’t, preferring instead to just slap the standard “Dear [Title] Lastname,” and be done with it. However, the conclusion of a letter, an email, or note should warrant more care—I think of it as a blessing, the final words with which you may ever again address whomever you’re writing.
Those of you with whom I’ve had the pleasure of corresponding personally will know that I conclude, “Be well”—in person as often as in print. There are several reasons, but mainly, I believe it to be a superior cap to the alternatives, some of which I consider presently.
- “Sincerely” has been overused to the point that it almost sounds insincere: it’s like saying, “Can’t-think-what-else-to-say, bye.” It can be used artfully and to great effect, but only if one has covered a broad base of topics and the whole letter could be punctuated paragraph-wise with, “(I mean this quite seriously.)” Furthermore, the focus of “sincerely” is your own attitude, not the well-being of the person you’re addressing. If you are truly sincere, you will be able to convey that by each carefully selected word that crafts every sentence you’re writing—and if it’s a careless letter, why send it as a letter with a proper structure instead of a text message? Overusing “sincerely” is like overtraining your biceps: it’ll look better if you buffer it by something else and give it a rest. Try something else.
- “Be good” is insufficient because of its colloquial use, which is actually just confused with what would otherwise say “be well,” but when taken literally (that is, outside its mostly-Southeastern US context), this conclusion is telling the person to achieve moral excellence or to keep up his or her health. Sounds great, right? But what if the person needs dwell in the grace of Christ more than he or she needs to seek to achieve moral excellence, being already driven unhealthily by a misconception like “performance theology.” Maybe in order to truly be well, this person needs to relax a bit; or even in the long run needs to be sick, yes, even to experience momentary pain, or to be challenged in a new way, in order to grow and ultimately be a better individual and more actively beneficial influence on the persons whose company he or she keeps.
- “Take it easy”—this one always gets me. Hereagain, this well-intentioned phrase is an insufficient blessing. If I have a busy day ahead of me, or if I need to be much higher-strung than I am in order to complete some task or another, then the last thing I need to hear is “take it easy”—either because I’ll take it to heart and fall from underperformance into uniform indolence, or because I’ll mentally contrast what “taking it easy” would look like (e.g., a neat twelve-year Scotch blend, a nice cigar, good friends, good conversation deep into the night) with what must actually be accomplished that day (e.g., finishing work, writing a paper, doing laundry, working out, writing emails, paying bills deep into the night) and will thus be more discouraging than helpful! Furthermore, while some Type-A personalities really do need to hear this and take it seriously, taking it easy is usually the last thing we really need to do, and in the best of cases is still an incomplete motivational invocation.
- “Grace and peace” is the closest letter-closing I’ve ever heard to “be well,” and is characteristically charitable and thoughtful: who wouldn’t enjoy the blessing of grace and peace? And yet, if one is truly to be well, he or she will enjoy the grace and peace of Christ, and many more blessings besides, though the path to get there be riddled with the thorns of hard lessons that inevitably expose that grace and that peace.
I therefore propose “Be well” as the superlative benediction. Maybe it is ultimately in my best interests not to take it easy, but rather to go to the gym and sweat a bit under a squat bar, run in the cold winter sunlight and breathe in the fresh air, write a letter, sing a song, or make a tough call to an old friend or family member with whom I’ve had rough relations in the past. Maybe I need to push past my own limitations and do something that’s quite the opposite of easy, and so become an encouragement to others and become a better man. Maybe what I need to be truly well is to have the opportunity of becoming violently ill in order to re-evaluate my priorities and get my life in order. Maybe I’m in a dead-end relationship out of which I’d never myself see a way if not for the “Dear John” letter that might initially seem to perforate my joy and fill me with dread, but which will seem in the long run a great blessing, as an aerator punctures a lawn and tills the garden to make the plot more fruitful. Maybe, though I might never consciously wish it on myself, I need something other than a candy-coated reality full of apparent charm and warmth in order to become the kind of man that I was intended to become. By wishing my wellness, you invoke all of this—and since true wellness cannot be attained apart from the grace and the peace that surpasses all understanding, you thereby wish that to my person, and I will partake of it if I am well—whether the means be straight and flat or crooked and full of obstacles by which I learn, grow, and am ultimately made better.
And so to you, dear reader, I say, be well.
Technorati Tags: wellness, benediction, blessing
Many of you know my great respect for William Gibson’s works, and that I derive hope from the fact that he’s a native South Carolinian.
