Surprise & Spontaneity of Street Psychology— One "Hello" at a Time

". . . & dreams keep doors ajar." ~ Jay Albrecht, attorney & poet

Time alone does not heal all wounds; pain needs airing out, a shoulder to cry on, & a spark to light the way into a fresh perspective.

All of us have issues, problems, obstacles making our lives unnecessarily more difficult. Being able to talk about the matter has several positive effects. It relieves tension &, when someone listens, reassures us that we are not alone, that someone cares.

Saying “Hi” to a neighbor or a total stranger or someone you’ve seen around but have never spoken with opens another possibility of an exchange, allowing another understanding individual into our lives, another opportunity for our mutual growth. The other person’s life may also be a vale of tears which s/he has not been able to shed because our burdens often need someone else’s presence to turn on the spigot, another hand on our shoulder for support, another’s warm words welcoming us reassuringly to share.

I love my job because I do not differentiate it from daily living. It is my work, my play, my passion for universal justice, respect, & humanity’s mutual concerns. I pursue it through one “Hello” at a time, generally accompanied by a friendly smile, wherever I go or happen to be.

Doing so, I cushion myself from the pain of daily living & its disappointments, bumps, & bruises. It helps some of those I encounter, too, even if only for a moment. They lift their eyes, smile, & realize that there is still something good out there, something to live for, someone who just might give a damn. Just the momentary contact with another, seeing another’s smile & friendly face & demeanor can help one keep their resolve to keep on, to not give up, to give it one more try.

Now, more than ever before, we desperately need a major kindness revolution, & it can all begin with a simple “Hello”. Just a smile or a friendly greeting can turn into something quite dramatic, but even as an end in itself, reaching out to another is pleasant. It’s like throwing a door open for fresh air. A positive response is pure gravy.

For folks unsure of themselves & lacking assertiveness, being ignored may be difficult to accept, but I have been taking risks of all sorts most of my life, so being ignored just motivates me to try harder on the next passer-by.

Outrageous results

Here’s an extreme example of what can transpire completely unexpectedly. 2 decades ago at a bus stop in Vilnius, Lithuania, a girl of 5 or so was waiting for the bus with her parents. She & I, both of us bored & looking around aimlessly, caught one another’s eye. I smiled. She beamed with delight. I winked & made some silly faces as she became quite animated & pleased with my antics. As they increased, so did her delight as she began jumping up & down & shouting gleefully.

Oh, hell, why not? & I could hardly believe it myself but I had joined her in jumping up & down, which she continued doing until the bus came & hauled her & her parents away. I was waiting for a different bus, so I remained at the stop, though no longer jumping up & down.

The girl boarded the bus, & noticing that I was not getting on, ran to a window &, beaming with the most radiant smile, waved to me like an old friend until we could no longer see each other.

Her parents had progressed to smiling when I joined their daughter’s jumping, but the other 2 people at the stop may as well have been dead — no response! No spark in their eyes or even a trace of their having witnessed our little caper.

I could imagine what they thought of the elated spontaneous interaction between 2 total strangers, but I didn’t care in the slightest because what they thought of me & my behavior was their problem, not mine. They had missed out enjoying — or even participating in — the delight of an old man & a little girl in creating a most unusual mutually pleasing engagement that entertains me & others every time I recall & share it after all these years.

Imagine what an outrageous sight & joyous celebration it would have been if everyone had overcome their inhibitions & joined in. The girl would have probably burst out of her skin realizing the happy madness she had launched. Part of her profusely vivacious response can be explained by the fact that kids feel they have little power in creating positive interactions with adults or strangers. From me, she received immediate positive feedback.

From a cold conservative Midwest to a vastly different Deep South

I grew up in the straitlaced U$ Midwest in an especially ultraconservative community. With some anxiety fueled by restless enthusiasm for something more life-affirming, I moved to a climatically & emotionally warmer place in my late twenties. In the cold & windy streets of Cleveland, Ohio, we had greeted others only when we knew one another.

In the U$ Deep South, even in a booming city like Atlanta, Georgia in the 1970s & ’80s, it was almost an insult to not say “Hello” to someone working in their yard as one passed. Though the South is quite uptight politically, greeting strangers on the sidewalk was generally practiced in quiet residential areas while I lived there, though not usually in the more bustling parts of town.

In a former Soviet colony

20 years later I moved to an entirely different culture, & once again, a bitterly cold unwelcoming climate, this one in northeastern Europe. Lithuania, from where my parents & sisters had fled as refugees during World War II, was an emotionally closed place. Strangers not only never greeted one another but may even ignore an injured person who has been hit & nearly killed by a car. I witnessed such an incident just a few years ago with the man’s head cracked open from ear to ear while several people standing at a bus stop just a few steps away did nothing.

In the mid-1990s, when I 1st arrived in Vilnius, the capital & most cosmopolitan city of Lithuania, no one even dared make eye contact with strangers while walking down the street. This was understandable considering that they had just emerged from ½ of a century of one of the most repressive regimes ever where one’s own family & best friends could not always be trusted.

It was similar in most of the smaller towns & even villages that I visited to facilitate workshops in human relations, creative thinking, & problem-solving to stick-in-the-mud schooljail autocratic administrators, teachers, psychologists, & social workers in the country’s schools, universities, & mental health settings. Being a social psychologist, I watched this process of human contact, or lack of it, between strangers intently & followed its evolution through the succeeding 2½ decades.

During the 1st year, I lived next door to a small grocery store with 3 women employees. Their behavior was typical of most former Soviet-style places with stiff formality & minimal interaction. On my 1st visit, realizing that I would probably be making daily stops in this shop on my way home, I decided to see if I could make a favorable change for my sanity & comfort.

I began greeting the women as I came in. As the one assisting me would reach for a plastic bag into which to toss my produce, I would whip out my own bags hoping to reduce the glut of plastics entering the environment & my apartment. Within a few days, not only were the women no longer reaching for the new plastic bags, but they were treating me with attention & even an occasional smile. When leaving, I would wish them all a “Good evening”.

After a couple of months of this routine, I was away for a week or 2 on a trip. As I reentered the store upon my return, I did not get to greet the ladies before they called out “Where have you been so long?” They had missed my congenial interactions & voiced it.

My students & therapy clients

Sharing this with my students at the universities at which I have taught as well as to my psychotherapy & workshop clients, I have encouraged them to try likewise to make a small difference among their neighbors, in some shop or in another place which they frequented, or among their co-workers or fellow students. The results have varied, but I neglected to follow up to discern which factors or attitudes led to successful outcomes & which did not. Sorry.

My psychotherapy clients, many coming in with low self-esteem & little assertiveness, are assigned the task of greeting neighbors, & then, when ready, the strangers they run into in the streets as I do regularly. I recall one young woman, a student, who came to me specifically to raise her confidence & increase her assertiveness. After she left, I went for a long walk during which I thought about the session I had just had with her & decided to do some counting.

This was around 2013, almost 2 decades since I’d come to Lithuania, during which time considerable cultural openness had occurred along with the incursion of many other Western values. Some of the novelty has taken devilish turns with devastating consequences, but an openness to engage with strangers in public places emerged.

My research in the streets

In the beginning, rarely would anyone greet me or smile back when I greeted them or smiled in their direction. Often, the person would look at me questioningly, usually startled or even frightened. Some would recover from their bewilderment & ask me directly from where we knew each other, & those few who did respond favorably were usually foreign students or tourists. Over the years, the percentage of strangers returning my greeting & smile has gone up dramatically. For a while a few years ago, as many as 2/3rds or 3/4ths were returning the inviting gesture.

As I began my tally that one day, the first 11 “Hellos” were all positive hits — unbelievable! The pleasant greetings & smiles for which I was aiming just kept coming. I must have been in an exceptionally good mood, for some people I meet in this way tell me that the friendly expression on my face is what drew them to interact with me in the 1st place. As they say here, one draws more bees with honey than with vinegar. Also, my recurring success that day was elevating my spirits even more on every go-round, each positive response reinforcing me in an upward spiral.

The 12th positive response was a duplicate. Both the man & I had reversed directions just after passing one another, & I greeted him a 2nd time before I realized my repetition. We both laughed. This encouraged him further, & he engaged me in conversation.

I explained what I was doing & he opened up his floodgates — he was an alcoholic desperately in need of help because he was ashamed of his drunkenness in front of his little grandkids, whom he loved dearly & who preferred sleeping on his bed rather than with their parents, as kids scared by thunder, nightmares, or just needing reassuring snuggling will often do. He got a short consultation though I was not treating addicts at the time. He then agreed that he would seek out a program that could help him.

I have a friend who, having learned the significance of being listened to by a caring individual, has taken this even deeper & provides full throttle counseling right there in the street, offering follow-up consultations over the phone or in person whenever the individual needs them. It’s become his favorite joy & pastime.

The frequencies of responses vary over time & from neighborhood to neighborhood with lots of other factors coming into play as well, but the COVID masking era has been most discouraging with smiles invisible & motivation on my part to reach out being somewhat stifled. At times, just before the virus, the returns on investment dipped as low as only 1/3rd, but ½ could usually be counted on.

Sometimes, the “Hellos” turn into more, & some of my efforts go a bit overboard, like the one with the jumping girl at the bus stop. Greeting kids & toddlers is especially rewarding because kids generally tend to draw little positive attention from strangers. Some, upon seeing me a 2nd time, will call out a greeting from across the huge parklike yards that encircle the Soviet Era apartment buildings in which I have usually lived.

With other species

I have even had success with animals. In zoos, I play peek-a-boo with various critters who crane their necks or even run up to the glass partition looking for me & where I have hidden.

Marley is a playful German Shepherd I have encountered twice in the woods near my home. Not being leashed, he ran up to me both times, bit into my walking stick, & insisted on taking it away. He won both tugs-of-war, which then prompted me to find & throw him another stick so I could retrieve my walking stick. Such spirited interactions make my day!

I know I’m patting myself on the back & blowing my own horn, but through my openness & authenticity, I feel I have opened more doors than the most active & successful burglars. I can only hope that I have at least stirred you, my dear reader, into considering doing something similar.

Homework

Go! Before our next meeting, say “Hello” to your neighbors, the folks in the shops, those out on the street, the potential next best friends whom you see every day at work or school. The opportunities are endless, the possibilities most rewarding.

Those with students or with children of their own, send them out doing likewise. Only by actively involving kids will future generations be an improvement over what we have become, & without major progress in human interaction soon, we are all doomed.

No one else is coming to save us. Technology will not do it if we can’t get along. Even now as I write this, the Russians are launching the rockets of what can become World War III unless Putin & the Russian military leaders come to their senses & stop.

I expect a full report of your & your children’s & students’ attempts.

© Vytas Stoskus, 2022