Saying Hello To Life Begins By Saying Hello To Strangers

This blog’s heading is indebted to children’s singer and songwriter, Eddie Coker, and his song “Say Hello,” a line of which is, “And that’s how we say hello to life,  forever – together everybody now Say hello.“

The simple gesture of saying “hello” . . . a daily, disciplined initiative of greeting the stranger or casual acquaintance in your life serves several important purposes.

First, the physical and deliberate effort required to greet someone we don’t know helps reorient our lives from an inward fixation on self and its concerns, to an outward focus on others and Us. This mustard seed initiative, is an important first-step in cracking the inertia of isolation/disconnection.

It requires risk and emotional vulnerability to share acts of kindness and initiate pleasantries with total strangers, because let’s face it, we’ve all experienced occasions when our kind gestures aren’t acknowledged, let alone appreciated.

For instance, frequently on late afternoon walks, I’ll pass fellow exercisers, many of whom I try to share a passing “hello” with. Some intentionally close out the world and exercise doldrums with ear buds and an MP3 player, and therefore simply don’t hear my greeting.  Many more, however, walk entombed within their own sound proof life and exercise bubble, uninterested in engaging life as it passes them by. Sometimes when I’m not feeling very self-confident, myself, my internal response to their non-reciprocity of my effort to be friendly is “To hell with you, too!”

Secondly, initiating pleasantries with strangers communicates to them that they have been seen and that their lives, however different they might be from your own, have meaning and significance to at least one person in the world – You!

In 1994 I attended an open house for parents at my son’s school in Stanger, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Most children had a parent or grandparent in attendance, and once the children had completed a 1-page drawing assignment – which parents watched them complete – they were free to go outside and play. All the children had left the classroom, except one, a struggling-at-his-assignment Zulu boy. No family member was present for him. I walked up from behind, peered over his shoulder at his work, and placing my hand lightly on his shoulder remarked, “Very nice! I like your drawing!” Well . . . you’ve never seen a more ear-to-ear smile from an eager-to-please, craving-to-be-affirmed child!

On my evening walks there is a two-story house that is occupied by elderly people. Occasionally a frail looking man is seated in a chair directly beneath the sliding garage door’s pathway, and as I round the house his eyes pierce me. Twice now I’ve turned my face toward him, simultaneously mouthed and waved hello.  His “critical stare” was merely my over-sensitive self-conscious awareness, because he smiles and quickly reciprocates my wave of the hand.

I’m indebted to two people for mentoring me on the importance and discipline of initiating pleasantries and kindnesses with strangers, casual acquaintances, or individuals you share no life history with.

First, my mother, who I kid you not, once she meets you will remember not only your name, but also your birthdate, your spouse, siblings and/or children’s names!

Secondly, my postgraduate, South African mentor, a legacy of whom, was his mostly endearing, sometimes embarrassing kindnesses (because of the effusive nature of his expressed care and attention), which he demonstratively shared with anyone who dared enter his personal space.

From waitresses, pedestrian passerby-ers, convenience or grocery store cashiers, grounds keepers, and janitorial staff to executive assistants, university students, academic/professorial and Rotary professional men and women, there were relatively few people who had not at one time or another experienced John.

Across Interstate-35 from Baylor University there was a popular Chinese restaurant that John frequented.  Staff faces lit up when John walked in, and before he even had to ask about the availability of hot and sour soup – his favorite – a bowl was placed before him. Just like in the movie The Last Holiday, where famous Chef Didier (Gérard Depardieu) makes a special table-side visit and fuss over “commoner” hotel guest and cookware salesperson Georgia Byrd (Queen Latifah), the Chinese owners always made an appearance at our table, whereby John enquired about their individual well-being and family in China, and they his life.

John’s inestimable gift to people was his practiced and demonstrated expression of care to anyone who crossed his life’s path.

He recognized and acknowledged individuals, and in so doing affirmed them as having innate value and worth, irrespective of their education, vocational attainments, or inherited socio-economic and genetic status.

My kids laugh when they accompany me out and about to town, particularly places where we quite regularly frequent, say, a local Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, or Costco, a popular wholesale merchant. On those occasions it’s obvious I’m John’s understudy because I know the names of staff and they me.

It’s easy to memorize and recite our nation’s motto, E Pluribus Unum (out of the many, one). It’s exceedingly arduous, time-consuming and a process of small steps to implement, however. The United States is no longer comprised of immigrants from merely European nations such as England, Scotland, Germany, Holland, France and Ireland. Our unity and future is being shaped by every nation recognized by the United Nations.

Relational and cultural-religious-linguistic bridge building (aka, national unity) can’t be politically achieved through a national mandate of English-only. Nor can or should civil unity (religion) be built on a foundation of collegiate and professional sports, or nationally observed holidays.

Our future unity as a nation will rely on the extent to which we individually and deliberately share gestures of kindness and dignity with those we’ve never before met, whether at our local grocer, places of worship, corporate offices, or building houses with Habitat for Humanity. It will require that the 1-percent recognize and affirm the humanity and significance of the 99-percent – listening to and hearing their life stories – and vice versa.

And so . . . this is a third reason to become a person, who intentionally and daily engages and shares pleasantries with the stranger . . . to sow the seeds of a national E Pluribus Unum at the local, micro level, and thereby, in turn, reinforce in your own conscious awareness, and the lives of your children and grandchildren, the essential truth that individually, and as the United States, we belong and have responsibility to a much larger and diverse family of humanity.