When something is better than anything

After scampering around the office, collecting signatures for the card that I bought a couple nights ago, it was my turn to find something to write in it. I think that the easiest thing to say in a situation like this is something like, "please feel more than welcome to consider me as a reference." (Unless, of course, you don't mean it. But we're not going down that road tonight.)

I like that offer partly because it nods acknowledgment to reality, then immediately points the focus at what's next. But mostly I like it because it's something. Too many folks like to say, "Let me know if there's anything I can do." (Which always makes me want to channel Henny Youngman with a comeback like "Pay my mortgage.") In that regard, I'd rather offer a discrete "something" than the "anything" that really means "nothing."

Yet despite the such an offer seeming (to me, at least) the simplest, even most obvious response to someone having the proverbial rug yanked out from under them, it seems to be shamefully neglected--at least from what I've observed over the years.

I don't know if anyone can say that the worst of this recession is over. Even if it were, job (re)creation, historically, lags behind GDP growth. So I would strongly suggest to anyone who reads this to consider doing "something" rather than "anything" for the next person they know who needs a lifeline back into employment. Thanks much.