Episode 27: The Importance of Hello

[00:00:00] Seth: So if you were to ask me today, if there was anything that you could do to help me, I would draw a blank. I think we like to help people that we love or even people that we just like, but there often isn't much help. I know a lot of people wouldn't say no to money but even still, outside of that, if our lives are fairly put together, we generally don't have anything that other people could do for us.

I live by myself half the time, and the other half of the time I have my kids with me. And one thing that's happened to me as I've adapted to being something of a bachelor is that with all this extra time I find that I crave to simply see other people and to have them see me. I'm more extroverted than most people, admittedly, but I don't believe that introverts are immune to this desire.

They just seem to need it less, or maybe they're just too shy to pursue it. And I wonder at times if it helps us remember that we exist. Just like atoms like to clump together into molecules and space dust eventually finds its way into forming into a planet or a star, we too seem to be drawn to each other.

And we're not really meant to be alone. For virtually my entire life, up until the point that I got divorced, I have always lived with family or a roommate. I have never been alone. Now that I do live alone, it's never become more apparent to me, the value of a simple hello. And to be able to look into another person's eyes, even just for a second.

It's almost like validation of our existence. Sometimes the weekends that I have without kids are the worst. I have things to do, so it's not a problem to stay busy, but I don't often have a need to leave my house since most of what I do can be done from home. So I have to purposefully create reasons to get out.

Whether it's visiting a friend, a walk, the gym, A class of some kind or grocery shopping. One of the things that's kind of funny to me is that I almost don't even have to interact with people to get my social fix. I can, sometimes I can just walk to the grocery store and see other people and just being around them is enough to kind of ease the discomfort of, you know, So I'm not sharing this to give you a sob story here.

I've found ways to, to manage this for myself, but it has definitely opened my eyes as to how important it is for us to interact with other people or even just to be around them. So. I attend church regularly and a common topic that comes up is how to make people feel welcome. And the surest way to keep someone from coming to church or frankly any organization is to make sure they feel like they don't belong.

So most churches generally make an effort to make people feel welcome. But, just like with any group of people, if you're there long enough, you probably get comfortable and you make friends. And it gets easy to stop paying attention to any of the new faces that come in. It's just simply human nature. And nobody wants to spend time where they don't feel seen.

Maybe if they're desperate enough, they may still go somewhere, even if everybody there ignores them. But I wouldn't count on too many people being that desperate. So it's possible I've mentioned this before, but I often wonder at times about the size of high schools today and whether or not they're partially to blame for So many kids finding belonging in some of the most unhealthy places I mean if you think about it at least in a class of a hundred kids Everybody would know your name in high school with 2, 000 kids You may not even see the same kid twice the whole time that you're there.

So I went to a big high school, and I can't even say that there was a universally popular person there. There was different groupings that seemed to have sort of their own social hierarchies, but they didn't interact a whole ton. I mean, I didn't even know who the homecoming king and queen were half the time, and it's not like I didn't have friends.

So, if you were a kid that happened to feel out of place, just imagine how easy it would be to feel completely invisible in that environment. There's just so much room to fall in between the cracks. When you're with that many people, I think a lot of people use this nefariously as well. In fact, I know they do.

I attended this lecture once by this former neo Nazi who told us how they would recruit these kids. He said that they'd look for these outcasts that felt like they were bullied or, or, or left out in some way, and they'd make them feel like they belonged and obviously they'd give them something to hate, which would help fuel the fire there.

I think more than giving them something to hate. I think it was just feeling that sense of belonging, being part of a thing. That can't be underestimated, the value of being part of something. We need it so badly. And you know, it's the same for any gang. I mean, they all use the same tactics. Some kid feels left out, they welcome him in, and you have a loyal servant to your, to your gang or organization.

Because that's You are the place where they can feel like they belong and they can feel like they're part of something. It's all about feeling seen because if we feel seen, then we feel like we belong. You can really see this in small towns and big cities in a small town. Everybody knows your name. I lived in a small town briefly, and I can't say I knew everybody there, but within a very short period of time, I knew the names of most of the people that worked at the hardware store.

And most of the people that worked at the auto parts store. And I mean, I've never experienced that before. And people just get familiar with you. You get to know that community, you start to build a history. There's just. There's only so many people there. So it's entirely plausible to get to know more or less everybody.

So just to give you an example here about the difference between a small town and a big city. If you're a homeless person living in a small town, it's likely that everybody more or less knows who you are. At the very least they recognize your face. And if that homeless person disappears in a small town, someone's probably going to notice.

And they're probably going to wonder what happened to him. They probably know who that person's related to. But if that same homeless person disappears in a big city, it's almost like he never even existed to those people. And on that topic, in the places that I've lived, I've, I've been told that I shouldn't be giving money to the panhandlers for a handful of different reasons.

And whether or not that's the right call is for you to decide. But even though I've chosen For myself, not to give money, I do try to return eye contact when they ask me for it. Not like a creepy stare down, but simply looking at them when they ask for money and responding. I may shake my head no, but I feel like at least we can give them the dignity of existing.

It's so tempting to completely ignore them because, of course, if they see us looking at them, they'll definitely ask us for money, if they haven't already. But I think they deserve to be seen. It is, I just can't imagine what it would feel like to sit there and clearly they've, they've made their peace with it cause they're doing it, but just to sit there and have, Everybody there trying to avoid seeing you.

That would mess with me. Eye contact is a funny thing though. My two year old daughter will not look at me when she doesn't want to do what I'm telling her. Then of course I'll insist that she looks at me and most of the time she can't help herself. She has to do what I'm asking because she's seen my eyes.

And I think that's why we like to avoid eye contact with people that we don't want to interact with. But people deserve that brief eye contact. I think they deserve to exist in the world. So I try my best to give it. It's easy to get caught up in our own problems and forget that anyone outside of our inner circle exists.

And you may be satisfied with the handful of people that you interact with, but I think we can all have a more fulfilling life if we're just willing to open that door a crack and be open to interacting with outsiders just a little more. I mean, I don't think we need to become best friends with them just because we met someone new, but I think it's worth opening that door.

So most of us probably want to feel like we're the kind of people that. Help others it makes us feel good to be helping others and you may be that kind of shirt off your back Helpful kind of person with people that you already know that are within your circle But most of us really fail at being that kind of person That would help a stranger.

This is why we could all do better at just saying hello to people. If we want to help make the world a better place, we have to know where we can help. And in order to know where we can help, we have to, we have to know what's going on with people. We don't need to be nosy, but simply interacting with people is, is an absolute prerequisite to being able to help people.

And we so often fail here, because we just don't inquire sincerely about other people. Or we refuse to waste time on people that we don't know well. The beautiful thing about helping another person is that it bonds you to them. So even just knowing that other people are thinking about us can go a long ways.

So I had someone not too long ago that I didn't know very well reach out to me and invite me to something. And it felt great to have someone that I didn't know very well, interested in doing something with me. We don't have to become best friends with everyone we meet. And getting to know a person doesn't mean you will have to invest a ton of time into them.

It's okay to just know a person and be friendly with them. In my own life, I've gotten so caught up with what's going on just within my inner circle. My family, a handful of friends, and I've so frequently neglected to reach out to others. Or to even think about others. Or I've let myself get picky prematurely thinking, Oh, I want to have a fun time with that person.

Where they're probably busy anyways. But experience has proven me wrong too frequently. There are so many people in my life, well I can't say so many, but there's at least a handful, that I never would have imagined myself becoming good friends with. But lo and behold, these people did become some of my good friends.

I can think of one in particular. To this day, we still talk to each other every few months or so, and catch up, and I mean this guy's personality is so different from mine. And I probably would have never pursued a much of a friendship with this person had I not had a scenario that kind of brought us together.

So I want to talk a little bit about where I live. I live in the South, but I'm not originally from here. And when I first got here, there was this thing that I noticed people doing that I've since just come to love. When you're driving down a two lane road, Both drivers will put a finger up or they'll not, not the middle finger, or they'll just, they'll do like a small wave.

They'll put their hand up and, or if you're walking, people will smile at you, or they'll just kind of put their hand up or something. It really is nothing more than an acknowledgement that the other person exists. It's kind of like saying, I see you. You see me. And it gives that nameless driver in the other car a soul when you do that.

And looking at people, in a non creepy way of course, acknowledges their existence. So I love that they do that here. I read a book a while back that talked about the negative effects that soldiers experience when they have to commit violence against another person. And one of the things the book said was that, The most psychologically damaging way for a person to take a life is to do it while looking into their enemy's eyes and having to kill them in hand to hand combat.

And I think it's because when you look into a person's eyes, you feel them in a sense. They become real. Even things as simple as night vision goggles makes the burden easier on a soldier because there's this kind of separation. To the benefit of those that are required to kill, most raids seem to happen at night now, which, you know, for their own conscience, I think that's a good thing.

Because otherwise, I think that PTSD that a lot of them experience would probably be even worse. So I've found that I really enjoy looking into a person's eyes for a second. As much because I like to be seen.

It's one thing to shout to a crowd of people that you love them, and it's another to go up to them and look at them. I've always found the former to be rather insincere, and the latter quite impactful. It's almost like when you look into another person's eyes, there's the smallest amount of vulnerability being exchanged.

There are a lot of people that Have enough people saying hello to them and it's not an issue But there are a lot more people than you might expect that don't have enough people saying hello to them So maybe try to say hi Let someone know that they're not invisible because otherwise they will find somewhere where they can be visible and it's not always a good place So I hope you can think of somebody that could use just a few more hellos and help them out with that. Don't forget the importance of hello.