By Gabe Delahaye and Jane Marie
Illustration by Lindsay Mound
“One of my best friends offered to pay for a weekend at a hotel in Miami so that we could catch up and she could escape the NYC winter. Three hours after arriving, she believes she’s coming down with a cold. Twenty-four hours later she gets diagnosed with influenza. I, of course, stayed in our room to help her (she was really fucking sick), but now I’m afraid I’ve caught it. Should I have booked my own room to avoid the flu and save my vacation or risked it for a bestie?”
Shit, you wanna know the first depressing thing I thought of while reading this? That New York Times article about Ebola and hugging, particularly this part:
“…when her toddler, Rebecca, started ‘toileting and vomiting,’ there was no way her mother was not going to pick her up.”
Oof.
Influenza is a deadly disease, and I can’t imagine walking away from someone I love who is suffering. On the other hand, yikes! That is NOT a tropical vacation. I’m sure the friend said, “Get another room, just call me every few hours to check on me? Try to enjoy yourself!” Hm, but could I have done it?
They say there is no such thing as a free lunch, and apparently there’s no such thing as a free hotel room in Miami either. This reminds me less of that Ebola story, and more of those stories of people who get married only to have their spouse diagnosed with some horrible illness within the first year. (In this metaphor, the spouse is Miami.) “In sickness and in health” is a genuinely beautiful and loving sentiment, but we’re all thinking 80/20 on that health/sickness split, right? 90/10? In both cases, you should hang in there, obviously, but it’s not the all-expenses paid vacation you were promised. In this case, since it’s a friend, I do think you can go ahead and get your own hotel room and just check in on them. If your friend expects you to spoon them back to health, they have different requirements from friendship than I do, and I think that I offer a very competitive Friend Package.
All of this being said, you know that influenza is just the flu, right? The flu sucks, and it can be dangerous especially in children and the elderly, but, like, calling it “influenza” seems kind of dramatic. I’m not saying this vacation sounds fun, or that you don’t have to run a cost-benefit analysis on being a good friend versus not vomiting up that weird stuff that comes up after you vomited up everything else first, I’m just saying this isn’t exactly a Gwyneth Paltrow in Contagion situation on her first night home after eating guano pork or whatever. We don’t have to break out the hazmat suits and the federal travel bans just yet, Matt Damon.
Okay, the flu is not Ebola, but we ARE supposed to get vaccinated—let’s all agree on that. I feel bad that I haven’t said this yet: What a lovely friend! I want a friend who will pay for a weekend away (*cough* Gabe *cough*). Come to think of it, now I’m sure you did the right thing. Everyone lived (right?), and you earned yourself at least another weekend away with her, if not a weekend away by yourself! Can you invoice her?
Also, if you are asking this question, I’m going to assume you don’t have kids and suggest you never have them. They are, as you’ve heard, fucking infested and you can’t get away from them. Unless you’re this lady. (Remember that lady, internet? I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately, for all the reasons you could guess.)
WHOA! THAT LADY! I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THAT LADY! This is obviously a different subject altogether, but, like, why would you write that? Her own conclusion is that she’s not really a very good example for other women since what she’s talking about is so complicated and personal, so it’s not even about empowering people in similar situations. She just wants everyone to know that she did something that definitely sounds kind of shitty no matter how much she insists that it isn’t shitty? Cool. Cool article.
But I do think you bring up an interesting point: What is our responsibility to other people? Not our children, either. Children should and often do get more (and better) from us, which is not, in my opinion, contrary to what you said, an argument for not having children (although I relinquish that soapbox to you for obvious reasons), but I do sometimes struggle with just what exactly, if anything, we owe our fellow man. I’m not talking about basic respect or giving to charity, I’m talking about sleeves rolled up, hands covered in muck, influenza splattered everywhere: What is our responsibility? With or without a free vacation to Miami at stake?
It is a rare and joyous occasion that you can introduce a four-year-old internet thing to an internet person. Thank you for that, Gabe. I say our responsibility is to follow our gut. Some people suck and their gut reaction is to run away and not help friends in need, and they should do that and never come back. Good riddance! If your gut tells you to stay by your friend’s side and nurse her back to health, you did the right thing by both of you.
That’s not that satisfying of an answer to me, Jane! I wanted you to tell me HOW TO LIVE MY TRUEST LIFE! The good news is that pretty much every question on Earth comes down to some variation on “What is my responsibility toward other people if I even have any,” so we get to keep wrestling with this one until the inevitable Great Pox decimates us all. So no worries!
More Great Advice from Gabe and Jane:
Need some great advice? Want to feel slightly better about the not-great thing you’re probably going to do anyway? Send your questions to Gabe and Jane, at matteradvice@medium.com.
Follow Matter on Twitter | Like us on Facebook | Subscribe to our newsletter
