THINGS WORTH TAKING CARE OF

According to Ludovico, more or less.

1. The thing you are doing right now.
   If you’re cooking, cook.
   If you’re interviewing someone, do the interview.
   If you’re walking the dog, walk the dog.

2. Dinner.
   Cooking for people is not really about feeding them. It is about seeing them happy because you made something for them.

3. Improvisation.
   Nothing in the kitchen needs to be completely fixed. Start somewhere, taste it, notice what is missing, add the thing that makes everything come together.

4. Sweet things with things that do not belong with them.
   Chocolate + chili.
   Peach + Camembert.
   Pear + earthy wine.
   Duck + figs.

5. A properly made coffee.
   Moka or machine. Depends how much time you have.

6. Bad photographs.
   Especially on film.
   If the exposure is wrong or the lighting is strange, the mistake belongs to you. Keep it.

7. Things you make yourself.
   Manual mistakes are still yours.

8. Your roots, even if you had to leave them.
   You can hate where you came from, leave it, change completely, and still let it remain part of you.

9. The different people you become in different cities.
   You do not need to be exactly the same everywhere. Eventually, the work is learning how to carry all those versions of yourself together.

10. Friendships that survive the argument.
    Closeness is not always the absence of conflict. Sometimes it is what remains after both people have behaved badly, admitted it, and stayed.

11. Knowing when care becomes control.
    Wanting to protect someone does not automatically give you the right to decide for them.

12. Asking for help.
    Everyone needs it.

13. Giving help.
    Partly because one day you will probably need some too.

14. The people you know they can become.
    Caring about someone can also mean caring about the version of them they have not reached yet.

15. Your dog when you are walking your dog.
    Not your phone. Not the person you are texting. Not whatever else is happening around you.

16. The things that keep pushing you forward after they are gone.
    A photograph of a paw.
    A tattoo on the back of an arm.
    A dog that is no longer there, still somehow telling you to keep moving.

17. Aperitivo time.

18. Vinyl records.

19. Macallan 18 Double Cask.
    Apparently “whisky” is far too imprecise a category and we should all educate ourselves accordingly.

20. Your dignity.
    Although Ludovico admits he regularly loses his.

21. Time.
    Not more time.
    The time to actually do things.