It’s 5 am and here we are…differently than you describe…yet…
I recently moved to a city from a very small town where I could stop by the post office (which was right across from the coffee shop) and say hi and/or visit with 10 people in 15 minutes. What I noticed very quickly, in this city, is that most people who are walking or running in the park have their earbuds in their ears. Many don’t turn their heads to acknowledge the person that they are passing. They appear to be in another world.
When I say “morning” some turn, return my greeting (or ignore me or move to escape me). What I find interesting is that my greeting disturbs them momentarily. They aren’t expecting interaction.
And, my unscientific observation is that this behavior is age related. 60+ welcome the greeting with a smile and are glad of the brief acknowledgment of connection. 50’s, it’s mixed. 40’s and under…is it fear that keeps them so tightly bound to themselves? I want to stop them and somehow help them turn to see that connection (however brief) is possible. But I don’t. I let them move on and hope they find it in different ways.
Conservation, and it makes me wonder how much of this is the age of screens. I'm 48, I was not raised on the screen, and I've always been one to make those small connections. Of course, my mother used to embarrass me horribly when she did that and I was a girl, but still, I learned from her.
Our kids are raised to find connections in their pockets and on their televisions, so it makes me wonder if that is part of what you're observing. Who knows? All I know is that like you, I'm gonna keep on trying to engage people.
Kim, your observation tracks with what I have noticed too, and I think you and @The Therapist Who Came Undone are both circling the same truth. Screens have taught a whole generation to expect connection without eye contact, without risk, without the small vulnerable moment of not knowing whether your “morning” will be returned.
The good news is that we are not powerless here. We shape the world we inhabit more than we sometimes remember. Parents and grandparents (or even those without children) who keep saying hello to strangers, who keep looking up from their phones long enough to nod at a neighbor, who keep modeling the tiny attempt at connection even when it is not returned…, they are teaching something screens cannot. They are showing that reaching toward another person, even briefly, even imperfectly, carries its own quiet reward, whether or not it lands.
Online interactions can offer a kind of empty-calorie connection — plenty of volume, very little nourishment. The real thing takes a small risk. If enough of us keep modeling that risk in front of the next generation, I have to believe some of it takes root.
I moved to a small city where people talk to you at Walmart. Wave from their cars when I'm walking and I see lots of smiles. Running is extremely tough on your body. Personally just moving is the important activity.
That's lovely. I don't disagree with you about running, but I have been doing it since I was 14 years old and giving it up feels like giving up, brushing my teeth! I'm just working on doing it more moderately:)
I really enjoyed how you stayed curious about why such a small interaction mattered. Those ordinary moments often reveal something important about what we need. Thank you.
This made me think about how strange it is that we can see the same person every day and still somehow remain strangers.
We know their routine. We know which coffee they order. We know they always arrive five minutes late and pretend this is because of traffic rather than a deeply held personal philosophy. We may even know which treadmill they prefer. But their name? Absolutely not. That would be intimacy.
Then one day, someone says hello, introduces themselves, and suddenly the whole arrangement changes. The background character becomes a person. The scenery speaks.
I think there is something deeply human in that. We are all moving through the world hoping to be seen, while also working very hard not to inconvenience anyone with the fact that we exist. So we wait. We hesitate. We tell ourselves there will be another morning, another chance, another slightly less awkward moment.
But sometimes the awkward moment is the doorway.
There have been periods in my life when a small gesture of recognition would have meant far more than the person offering it could possibly have understood. Not because it solved anything. It simply interrupted the loneliness for a moment. It said, “You are not invisible here.”
Maybe that is what community really is. Not a grand declaration. Not a committee, a mission statement, and twelve emails about scheduling. Just one person deciding that another human being will not remain part of the furniture.
And the strange beauty of it is that we rarely know what our smallest gestures are doing inside someone else. We think we are only saying hello.
Sometimes we are reminding someone that they still belong to the world.
You really do have a gift for taking the tiniest of moments and using them as a mirror to show us our humanity ❤ (Also, thanks for the reminder about the importance of midlife strength training, which I am currently neglecting!)
I love this. The shift from trying to make our bodies smaller to wanting to make them stronger is so beautifully captured here. And I love your reminder that our lives are often changed by the smallest moments of human connection. 🤍
Your journey from running to quiet an anorexic mind toward lifting so your body can last gives the gym scene a second layer of meaning. Chris’s tap on the shoulder interrupts 280 mornings of parallel solitude at the same moment your own relationship with strength has been changing. The encounter shows community forming before conversation, through repeated presence that finally becomes recognition. Grateful for the honesty with which you connect recovery, ordinary ritual, and the small human gesture that made an already full life feel less alone.
I loved this. I make a practice of noticing name tags at places where there are servers and after they check me out, saying thank you ______" and then wait to see their blank faces light up the smiles appear and I am no longer simply the next person through the line. Even the grouchiest ones at least try to smile. We do the same in restaurants. It's just fun to make someone feel seen. Makes me happy.
This brings to mind something from when I was taking my kids to school each day. There was a
"T" and we had to turn right, and there was the school. If we had kept going, we would have run into a house where an elderly man stood every morning watching the children coming to school. I always waved to him, and he waved back. I think my kids did too sometimes. He looked so happy. After a year or so of that, he was no longer there.
P.S: Yesterday I had 30 minutes to travel to have lunch with a friend. Just enough time to listen to your "live. There was one time I even thought she was talking, but I glanced at the screen, and it was you. What a duo you are. Different and Alike all at the same time. Every other day I pick my phone up, and there you are - in my inbox. I try really hard not to read email in bed, but I do cheat and read yours...then I put it away. (ok, most of the time. ) then I have to read it again, slowly later in the day.
Well, I am insanely flattered and also love everything about this. There really is very little that feels better than making someone else smile. It can be such a quick moment, but it feels so good.
I have always found that people were friendlier in the morning, especially on a sunny morning. On morning walks, people would look at you and smile or nod, or even murmur "good morning". Afternoon walks, people had their heads down and rarely connected. On the bus, everyone was miserable and grumpy no matter the time of day.
So, I gotta tell you, I read this earlier today and was creeped out by a guy at the gym, familiar or not, picking an awkward moment to tap you on the shoulder and introduce himself. There is an exactly zero percent chance I would ever do that. I read the rest of the piece and understood what you were saying but just didn’t relate. Obviously, I’m responding now because I had my own moment and suddenly, I did relate.
I carry myself in a way which asks you not to approach. In the event we need to interact, I’d prefer we conduct the transaction with brief, courteous pleasantries and then go about our respective lives.
I was running some errands earlier, including a stop at the dispensary for some super primo flower (32% THC) they had on sale. Construction everywhere. Every idiot available is on the road and on their phone. It’s 12:30, I’ve been hungry since I woke up, have a meeting at 1:30, blah, blah, blah.
And then I stop by a Jimmy John’s I go to only once or twice a month. I’m walking in trying to remember what I like to order at this place and scanning the board for help. The guy at the counter, who I’ve never noticed before, gets my attention and asks if I want a number 7. Duh, of course I want a number 7. It’s the whole fucking reason I drove 10 minutes out of my way with that meeting looming, knowing I was going to have to inhale that double meat beast in record time and relishing the idea at the same time.
I met his eyes and snapped, “Fuck yeah, I do!” as I strode up to the counter and gave him a high five. Then I paid and we chatted for a minute while they made the sandwich. I’d never been rude to this guy before, but I’d never been particularly friendly either. But here was a friendly guy, with a different sort of rando tap on the shoulder, who also said, “I see you here.” And it felt great. Like, really, really great. It’s hard to explain how my whole day changed at that moment and I walked out with a lighter step than when I walked in.
Maybe I’d have been less receptive if I hadn’t read your post earlier. Maybe not. But I’m glad I did. Even with my “prickly demeanor” (as Sarah calls it) I’m trying to learn the power of a smile and a nod. It’s nice to receive, but I know this at least, it’s better to give. And I’m trying to be a little more aware of that.
P.S. I know our politics are not aligned, but I’m going to throw you a bone here. I saw someone say the current heat wave is due to the gates of hell opening up to receive Mitch McConnell. That’s some funny shit.
P.P.S. I may have smoked some of that weed already.
So, I gotta tell you...there is so much to respond to here. I totally get your initially response to Chris...he absolutely startled me before he delighted me. And then, it stood in such contrast to my previous experience, that I couldn't help but want to be more like him.
Then I get to your second paragraph.. the THC, and I was dying. I don't know, I had a picture of you in my head after all of our interactions, and somehow none of them included you in a dispensary, buying super primo flower. It made me smile and reminded me that getting to know someone, in all their layers, takes a LONG time.
And then, I read the rest of what you wrote and I'm not sure you could have said anything else that would have made me feel quite so good about what I wrote. I love that we have big differences, but also, plenty to learn from eachother. May we all be people who always do our best to make other people smile.
It’s 5 am and here we are…differently than you describe…yet…
I recently moved to a city from a very small town where I could stop by the post office (which was right across from the coffee shop) and say hi and/or visit with 10 people in 15 minutes. What I noticed very quickly, in this city, is that most people who are walking or running in the park have their earbuds in their ears. Many don’t turn their heads to acknowledge the person that they are passing. They appear to be in another world.
When I say “morning” some turn, return my greeting (or ignore me or move to escape me). What I find interesting is that my greeting disturbs them momentarily. They aren’t expecting interaction.
And, my unscientific observation is that this behavior is age related. 60+ welcome the greeting with a smile and are glad of the brief acknowledgment of connection. 50’s, it’s mixed. 40’s and under…is it fear that keeps them so tightly bound to themselves? I want to stop them and somehow help them turn to see that connection (however brief) is possible. But I don’t. I let them move on and hope they find it in different ways.
Conservation, and it makes me wonder how much of this is the age of screens. I'm 48, I was not raised on the screen, and I've always been one to make those small connections. Of course, my mother used to embarrass me horribly when she did that and I was a girl, but still, I learned from her.
Our kids are raised to find connections in their pockets and on their televisions, so it makes me wonder if that is part of what you're observing. Who knows? All I know is that like you, I'm gonna keep on trying to engage people.
Kim, your observation tracks with what I have noticed too, and I think you and @The Therapist Who Came Undone are both circling the same truth. Screens have taught a whole generation to expect connection without eye contact, without risk, without the small vulnerable moment of not knowing whether your “morning” will be returned.
The good news is that we are not powerless here. We shape the world we inhabit more than we sometimes remember. Parents and grandparents (or even those without children) who keep saying hello to strangers, who keep looking up from their phones long enough to nod at a neighbor, who keep modeling the tiny attempt at connection even when it is not returned…, they are teaching something screens cannot. They are showing that reaching toward another person, even briefly, even imperfectly, carries its own quiet reward, whether or not it lands.
Online interactions can offer a kind of empty-calorie connection — plenty of volume, very little nourishment. The real thing takes a small risk. If enough of us keep modeling that risk in front of the next generation, I have to believe some of it takes root.
This is beyond beautiful.
I moved to a small city where people talk to you at Walmart. Wave from their cars when I'm walking and I see lots of smiles. Running is extremely tough on your body. Personally just moving is the important activity.
That's lovely. I don't disagree with you about running, but I have been doing it since I was 14 years old and giving it up feels like giving up, brushing my teeth! I'm just working on doing it more moderately:)
Good luck
❤️
“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.” ♥️
*Mary Oliver
I LOVE this!
I really enjoyed how you stayed curious about why such a small interaction mattered. Those ordinary moments often reveal something important about what we need. Thank you.
Thank you for this lovely response❤️
These moments warm your heart and give you a sense of belonging and that I matter.
Yes!!!
What a joy to read your words this morning….your reminder gave many a friendly interaction with me in Sacramento today! 💕 Pass it on!
I love this so much! Thank you for sharing this!
5am gym is the best gym. (I like the rest of your post too.)
We are in full agreement!
This made me think about how strange it is that we can see the same person every day and still somehow remain strangers.
We know their routine. We know which coffee they order. We know they always arrive five minutes late and pretend this is because of traffic rather than a deeply held personal philosophy. We may even know which treadmill they prefer. But their name? Absolutely not. That would be intimacy.
Then one day, someone says hello, introduces themselves, and suddenly the whole arrangement changes. The background character becomes a person. The scenery speaks.
I think there is something deeply human in that. We are all moving through the world hoping to be seen, while also working very hard not to inconvenience anyone with the fact that we exist. So we wait. We hesitate. We tell ourselves there will be another morning, another chance, another slightly less awkward moment.
But sometimes the awkward moment is the doorway.
There have been periods in my life when a small gesture of recognition would have meant far more than the person offering it could possibly have understood. Not because it solved anything. It simply interrupted the loneliness for a moment. It said, “You are not invisible here.”
Maybe that is what community really is. Not a grand declaration. Not a committee, a mission statement, and twelve emails about scheduling. Just one person deciding that another human being will not remain part of the furniture.
And the strange beauty of it is that we rarely know what our smallest gestures are doing inside someone else. We think we are only saying hello.
Sometimes we are reminding someone that they still belong to the world.
This gave me goosebumps, like you're writing often does. A reminder to always be looking out for others.
You really do have a gift for taking the tiniest of moments and using them as a mirror to show us our humanity ❤ (Also, thanks for the reminder about the importance of midlife strength training, which I am currently neglecting!)
Thank you for this beautiful compliment.
Strength training is an easy thing to neglect, there's just so much maintenance to do:(
I love this! There is something so powerful about connection, even in the small moments. 💕
They most definitely add up!
I love this. The shift from trying to make our bodies smaller to wanting to make them stronger is so beautifully captured here. And I love your reminder that our lives are often changed by the smallest moments of human connection. 🤍
Thank you for this lovely message:)
Your journey from running to quiet an anorexic mind toward lifting so your body can last gives the gym scene a second layer of meaning. Chris’s tap on the shoulder interrupts 280 mornings of parallel solitude at the same moment your own relationship with strength has been changing. The encounter shows community forming before conversation, through repeated presence that finally becomes recognition. Grateful for the honesty with which you connect recovery, ordinary ritual, and the small human gesture that made an already full life feel less alone.
The older I get the more meaning I place on those small gestures. They absolutely add up.
I loved this. I make a practice of noticing name tags at places where there are servers and after they check me out, saying thank you ______" and then wait to see their blank faces light up the smiles appear and I am no longer simply the next person through the line. Even the grouchiest ones at least try to smile. We do the same in restaurants. It's just fun to make someone feel seen. Makes me happy.
This brings to mind something from when I was taking my kids to school each day. There was a
"T" and we had to turn right, and there was the school. If we had kept going, we would have run into a house where an elderly man stood every morning watching the children coming to school. I always waved to him, and he waved back. I think my kids did too sometimes. He looked so happy. After a year or so of that, he was no longer there.
P.S: Yesterday I had 30 minutes to travel to have lunch with a friend. Just enough time to listen to your "live. There was one time I even thought she was talking, but I glanced at the screen, and it was you. What a duo you are. Different and Alike all at the same time. Every other day I pick my phone up, and there you are - in my inbox. I try really hard not to read email in bed, but I do cheat and read yours...then I put it away. (ok, most of the time. ) then I have to read it again, slowly later in the day.
Well, I am insanely flattered and also love everything about this. There really is very little that feels better than making someone else smile. It can be such a quick moment, but it feels so good.
And thank you for just making me smile.
I have always found that people were friendlier in the morning, especially on a sunny morning. On morning walks, people would look at you and smile or nod, or even murmur "good morning". Afternoon walks, people had their heads down and rarely connected. On the bus, everyone was miserable and grumpy no matter the time of day.
Thank you for another great post.
Such an interesting observation!
So, I gotta tell you, I read this earlier today and was creeped out by a guy at the gym, familiar or not, picking an awkward moment to tap you on the shoulder and introduce himself. There is an exactly zero percent chance I would ever do that. I read the rest of the piece and understood what you were saying but just didn’t relate. Obviously, I’m responding now because I had my own moment and suddenly, I did relate.
I carry myself in a way which asks you not to approach. In the event we need to interact, I’d prefer we conduct the transaction with brief, courteous pleasantries and then go about our respective lives.
I was running some errands earlier, including a stop at the dispensary for some super primo flower (32% THC) they had on sale. Construction everywhere. Every idiot available is on the road and on their phone. It’s 12:30, I’ve been hungry since I woke up, have a meeting at 1:30, blah, blah, blah.
And then I stop by a Jimmy John’s I go to only once or twice a month. I’m walking in trying to remember what I like to order at this place and scanning the board for help. The guy at the counter, who I’ve never noticed before, gets my attention and asks if I want a number 7. Duh, of course I want a number 7. It’s the whole fucking reason I drove 10 minutes out of my way with that meeting looming, knowing I was going to have to inhale that double meat beast in record time and relishing the idea at the same time.
I met his eyes and snapped, “Fuck yeah, I do!” as I strode up to the counter and gave him a high five. Then I paid and we chatted for a minute while they made the sandwich. I’d never been rude to this guy before, but I’d never been particularly friendly either. But here was a friendly guy, with a different sort of rando tap on the shoulder, who also said, “I see you here.” And it felt great. Like, really, really great. It’s hard to explain how my whole day changed at that moment and I walked out with a lighter step than when I walked in.
Maybe I’d have been less receptive if I hadn’t read your post earlier. Maybe not. But I’m glad I did. Even with my “prickly demeanor” (as Sarah calls it) I’m trying to learn the power of a smile and a nod. It’s nice to receive, but I know this at least, it’s better to give. And I’m trying to be a little more aware of that.
P.S. I know our politics are not aligned, but I’m going to throw you a bone here. I saw someone say the current heat wave is due to the gates of hell opening up to receive Mitch McConnell. That’s some funny shit.
P.P.S. I may have smoked some of that weed already.
So, I gotta tell you...there is so much to respond to here. I totally get your initially response to Chris...he absolutely startled me before he delighted me. And then, it stood in such contrast to my previous experience, that I couldn't help but want to be more like him.
Then I get to your second paragraph.. the THC, and I was dying. I don't know, I had a picture of you in my head after all of our interactions, and somehow none of them included you in a dispensary, buying super primo flower. It made me smile and reminded me that getting to know someone, in all their layers, takes a LONG time.
And then, I read the rest of what you wrote and I'm not sure you could have said anything else that would have made me feel quite so good about what I wrote. I love that we have big differences, but also, plenty to learn from eachother. May we all be people who always do our best to make other people smile.
Smoke on my friend:)
TTWCU:)
SO wonderful to "meet" you too!!! ❤️
❤️