Sometimes I feel like saying Hello and sometimes I don't. I suspect it is easier to launch a conversation with a complete stranger when both of us know it is going to be quite temporary. Getting too talkative at the beginning of a 3 or 4 hour flight seems riskier than talking to someone in the cashier's line. My stepfather advised me 40 years ago to just write to my mother and disregard her lack of return letters or calls. If they came, fine and if they didn't, that was ok, too. Worked surprisingly well.
It is beginning to be time to think about a letter to go with our Christmas cards. The letters themselves are a sign, regardless of the contents, that we feel close enough to tell others how our year has been. The same with the letters we get. I am impressed at what contact, attention of any kind, accomplishes and what the lack of response, talk or writing, does to shut everything down. Want a relationship? Talk or write. About what? Just about anything.
Discuss the weather. Discuss what you are reading. Discuss the situation in Ferguson or the New York choke hold. Mention how you love Justin Bieber or how you want to hear nothing about Lady Gaga. You can save the cost of a book or the high cost of admission to a play if you listen attentively to what the book was about and what the audience saw. Listening attentively, with a few comments thrown in here and there, will do wonders for you and for the talker.
Another move that many people miss is recall, explicitly stating that you were thinking just now of the time that ___________ or the comment he made a few days ago. It is still on your mind or it haunts you or it has gotten under your skin and you would like to know just what he really meant. Has he been talking to your mother? Mentioning that a comment is still on your mind, that you think about what she said later, after the fact and on your own, is a high compliment to the power and value of her thinking.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
