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“And then the whole world walked inside and shut their doors and said — We will stop it all.

Everything. To protect our weaker ones. Our sicker ones. Our older ones.

And nothing, NOTHING, in the history of humankind ever felt more like LOVE than this.”

Those are the words, handwritten on a piece of computer paper, found taped to a utility pole in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, and shared to social media the same day.

It makes one stop and reflect.

Social distancing is inconvenient, certainly. We are, or most of us are, social beings. Being told to stay home when our lives aren’t oriented toward staying home is a drastic change for many. It’s an imposition. The natural flow of daily life has been interrupted and neighborhoods, towns, counties, states and entire nations are floundering to find a new way of doing things. It’s unsettling.

As unsettling and inconvenient as a “stay home” directive is, it is necessary, for precisely the reason stated in the poem above. It is necessary to protect the weak, those with compromised immune systems. It is necessary to protect the sick, those with cancer, with diabetes, with a host of underlying medical issues. It is necessary to protect our older ones: parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends and neighbors.

Every person reading this has a loved one, or three or 10, who fit into one or more of the above categories. There’s a chance that those loved ones could be laid low by this virus for which, right now, there is no treatment and no cure.

And so we stay home — not because we want to; not because someone told us to.

We stay home out of love, for our family, our friends and our neighbors.

And that’s the best reason of all.

The poem is credited to Chelsie Diane, at @poemsandpeonies on Instagram.