hello

Hello

by Bob on May 24, 2007

"Hello". This used to be a greeting, both in person and on the telephone. It was also used as an exclamation of wonder and surprise, if one remembers one's Sherlock Holmes stories.

It is still thankfully used in person, but it is waning in its use on the telephone.

Saying "Hello" implies an element of surprise.

One reason for this decline of saying hello on the telephone is that with "caller id" and other smart things on the phone and cell phone, in theory one knows who is calling by looking at the device. And one can simply pick up the phone saying the caller's name.

This takes away the element of surprise both in a good sense and bad sense.

Sometimes it's wonderful to be surprised to get a phone call from someone and we don't know who it is before we pick up the phone and say "Hello" !

In other cases, like much of the rest of our modern technological tools, we use it to further insulate ourselves from other people.

To avoid anxiety, in what has been called "The Age of Anxiety" in "The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety" by Alan Watts in 1951, we must compulsively know who is calling before we answer the phone and engage a conversation.

This in unrealistic in the long term. When we go around a blind corner on the street, we chin up and see when we go around the corner who is coming or passing by us. This is the essence of living life. Taking a chance. The Cloud of Unknowing, beforehand.

I think civilisation would be better off, in the main, to happily allow surprises and relinquish control to the fates.

As was said in T.S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock":

"Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."

One must dare. One must turn off the caller id once in a while and allow happy surprises. Or unpleasent ones. But allow it to unfold.

One recalls the ear-to-ear smile on the face of a little child who has just had their birthday cake carried to the table. Even they sort of knew it was coming. But when it comes, all joy breaks out.

And Dickens did say we should endeavour to be as a child in our perception, for a child's perception, for the most part, is clear and not muddied.