I found this image online years ago and thought it was strangely beautiful.

It is just a bobby pin, something most places would probably throw away without thinking. But instead, they placed it in a little plastic sleeve, attached it to a carefully printed note, and returned it like it was something worth keeping. Maybe it cost them a few minutes of their time. Maybe less. But you can literally see and feel the care in it.

I remember seeing it and wishing everything around us had that level of intentionality, the sort rooted in actual care. And when I say this, I don’t mean fanciness or grandness exactly. I’m also not saying it from some high-nosed place. Lord knows how much slop I’ve put out into the world. I’m saying it from a place of wanting to see more of this around me, while also wanting to change myself so I’m not contributing to the very thing I’m complaining about.

And I get it. We don’t get enough sleep, rent needs to get paid, work piles up, we’re anxious, etc. etc. Life is tiring. We’ll cut corners. Sometimes getting the thing done at all is its own victory. But I don’t think a lack of time, space, or resources should stop us from at least striving toward care.

The soup my mom would make during winter reminds me of this. It wasn’t expensive…lentils, potatoes, carrots, macaroni, chicken broth. But she would let it slowly cook on the stovetop until everything had time to come together. She would always add extra pieces of potato for me because she knew they were my favorite.It wasn’t expensive ingredients to make this or some elaborate michelin presentation. She knew what we liked, knew it was cold and we’d be freezing walking from the bus stop to our apartment. She not only knew what we needed, but took her time with it the way that brings us the most joy.

I think about handwritten notes in the same way. Back when I was in grade school and we would play music at different events, people would sometimes give us little notes afterward thanking us. I’ve also received notes from people I mentored, sometimes with a small sketch in the corner or some oddly specific detail they remembered. I still have many of them. They probably took only a couple of minutes to write, but they feel overwhelmingly better than a thank you text. Not because a text means nothing (and of course it depends on who wrote it lol). But the care is more visible through this physical object. Someone sat down, found a pen, chose their words, and remembered something specific enough to make the note feel like it could only have been written to you. Very little time, space, or money was needed.

Sometimes this kind of care is larger and more obvious. You walk into a cafe where the music is at the right volume, the chairs are comfortable, the menu is readable, and someone clearly thought about what it would feel like to spend an hour there. Or you visit a restaurant where the food is beautiful, but not only for show. Even a website can have this quality. It works properly, respects your time, and helps you do the thing you came there to do. A surprisingly high bar these days.

Unfortunately there is a lot of slop. A lot of things seem designed mainly to hold our attention long enough to sell us something. Caring less takes less time, less time burns less cash, and less cash spent makes the profit larger. The math can make sense in the short term, even when the thing being shoved in your face barely does.

The age of AI has made this feeling harder to ignore. It’s easier than ever to produce more things, faster, without necessarily caring whether any of them should exist. But I also don’t want to become so grumpy about carelessness that I stop noticing the care already around me. Maybe that’s what the #system is trying to get us to do it. There are still wonderful people, cafés, restaurants, websites, meals, notes, and small gestures everywhere. The noise does get overwhelming if I’m not careful and it makes them easier to overlook.

With all the pessimism in the past 2 paragrahps, I also want to emphasize..we also can’t get lost in every tiny detail and forget the underlying goal. Not everything needs ceremony. Sometimes dinner really is whatever can be eaten while standing over the sink. Care does not always require perfection or some huge amount of effort. Often, it just means noticing one more thing or a little more than you had to. And I feel like most of us overlook just how much insane power this little bit has.

Occasional acts and thoughts become habits, and habits eventually become a person. On a larger scale, they can even begin to define a culture.Sometimes this care looks grand. Sometimes it looks like soup. And sometimes it looks like returning someone’s bobby pin.