A Thousand reasons why to say Hello!

The ease of social media and technology has caused a strain on our society. The art of communication and body language has fallen to deaf ears at the stroke of a button. Those moments of good intellectual conversation that created a closer bond between friends, lovers and common everyday people has lost its value. Even while waiting at random spots like coffee houses or in the elevator has lost the desire to connect. We have replaced that with our faces glued to our devices and not in tune with our current surroundings at time. Today, the common "hello" to a passing stranger could come across as offensive. Some of us don't even know our neighbor's first name! Well, within this quick thought, (not a thousand) I am going to present a few reasons why we should stop to say hello.

We are constantly playing the slave to our daily schedules. Work/Life balance is often out of the window. Needless to say if kids are in the mix! At that point, it is hard at times to even breath the air of your own for self-gratification. It is easy to get caught in our own bubble and stay in our lane! With the constantly developing free world, sometimes the best move is to mind your business. However, one of the main reasons why we should be open to speaking with other people is our purpose in life may be discovered in the simplest conversation with a random person. Words have power and those words could uplift, destroy or even guide a person to the exact thing needed to push them to the next level. I am no suggesting to have a "tell-all" session with random strangers, but organic conversations can go a long way. I cannot count the times when waiting and I start a conversation with a random person and throughout the conversation, I was hit with a lightbulb in the head moment from something they might have said or suggested without knowing my personal situation. The best advice comes from a random person who may not have any knowledge about your personal life or situation that may be occurring at the moment. I once knew a very successful person and his number one advice to me was to talk to people!

Other people have the gateway to some of our most common everyday problems. With the waves of the latest update, we can miss out on key information (at no cost but a simple "hello") that we can take miles down the road to improve our lives! That song in the Blues Brothers Movie, "Everybody, needs Somebody!" The minute we begin to isolate, our soul begins to rot away and set a course to self destruction. Even with people who sadly end their lives, the common cause was that person had no outlet to tap into, or no one to talk about. This goes deeper than a common "hello", but it has to start somewhere! We are all subject to delivering our souls a great disservice when we cut the world out and refuse to communicate.

I will keep the thought short, and hopefully this will kick-start a new attitude to encourage that we reach out to each other instead of locking our faces to a device while passing from point A to B. My last point is most important, but requires a special skill set. Small talk is a way to feel a person out. This is merely a safety precaution in some cases. Not giving facts or hard numbers, but I would speculate to say that most robberies or attacks are on victims who don't pay attention to their surroundings. Its almost like the department store technique of seeing a suspicous person. Management suggest that store employees say hello to people as a deterrent to let deter any possible shoplifters away. People should communicate with a soft "hello" to put others on notice just in case.

Communication goes a long way, and we should return to it to help our society out on so many levels. It is the cure to some of our social problems and could prevent horrible things from happening. As my successful friend use to say, "talk to people!".