Today an employee told me, Be well! as I was walking out
of a store. I thought, that’s nice, he doesn’t want me to get sick or stressed
or anything. He wants things to go smoothly in my life. He’s pretty much saying
have a nice day.
Then my grammar-obsessed mind started to mull it over and I
realized that, purposefully or not, that is not at all what the man was saying.
The word well is an adverb, not an adjective, so he wasn’t telling me what to be, but rather how to be. Rather than wishing me well
he was more encouraging be to live my life better, to live it well.
Be well doesn’t necessarily mean go out and change the
world. It doesn’t necessarily mean do heroic deeds wherever you go. At its
simplest I think it means: take your job as a human being seriously. Don’t
waste away your days being lazy and bored; don’t take for granted the gifts and
resources that have been given to you; don’t become upset when things don’t go
your way.
As I sat and pondered all these implications, I realized that
be well actually relates quite well to the World Race (doesn’t everything?).
Of course it would be awesome to see lives change while on the race, to see the
immediate impact of our efforts in some epic way. In trying to seek out those
awesome moments, though, we may forget to learn how to be well, how to live
out our daily lives with grace and integrity, which could be difficult to do
while navigating foreign cultures and living in close community with our teams.
Be well shifts my focus from “What is something that I can
do to spread Gods love?” to “How can I change the way I live so that I am
always spreading Gods love?” Going on the World Race is just one step of many
that I hope will teach me how to be better, how to be well.
