I am a casual observer of human behavior.  I like to sit on the front porch and watch the people pass by on the street on their way to work, school, or whatever.  I noticed recently that 99.99% of women will cross the street at exactly the same point.  I demonstrated this to Lily and she offered an obvious reason.  “They do that to avoid the sunlight that is hitting the other side,” she matter of factly informed.  But why the exact same point, I inquired?  She offered a reason for that too, but I really didn’t pay much attention.  Then there is that 1 out of 1000 exception (well, if you do the math correctly, that would be 1 out of 10,000 according to my very non-scientifically gathered statistics).  Why does that person NOT cross the street as do the others?  And then there are the men.  Some cross, some don’t.  Go figure.

I noticed another phenomenon during my caffeine enhanced morning observations of human doings.  And that is that under a certain threshold of age, let’s say around 30, no one dares to say hello.  Above that age there tends to be some form of greeting and the older the person gets, the more endearing becomes said greeting.  It will go from the under 30 eyes straight ahead and maybe a bit of a threatening scowl, to a sightly over 30 grunt, to the 40’ish “buenos dias,” and as the age increases to say beyond 60, an actual casual conversation (with the old dude offering a witty one liner delivered in Ross Perot-like fashion).  Why is that?  Of course, non-adults exhibit a completely different dynamic altogether, with the under 10 crowd behaving more like the over 60’s and the adolescents more like the under 30’s….tends to be an inverse relationship to the adults, with friendliness increasing as age decreases.

Of course the easy explanation is that younger men in particular still have to prove their manliness (and for the opposite sex, their indifference-ness) and being unfriendly is, I guess, more macho.   Granted I am doing nothing here to provoke a response, just observing.  If I exerted some form of potential influence, the experiment would be totally blown.  The younger crowd, tends to view human interaction as more of a competitive threat than an opportunity for engagement.  And of course the questions is, why is that?  The answer to that may provide solutions to riddles of life that often lead to wars and pestilences.

Being friendly I am afraid is all too often seen and felt as either weakness or weirdness.  After all people are not to be trusted.  It is a real  jungle out there and I got to get mine before that guy get’s his.  Because as we all know, there is only a limited amount of stuff to be gotten, not nearly enough for everyone to have, well, enough.  Dog eat dog baby.  Eye for an eye!  And all that utter malarkey. So being friendly just tends to be sloughed off as something reserved for weaklings and weirdos.  Like the old guy who just sits on the corner, smiling and waiving at all the passersby.

Being friendly I am afraid is all too often seen and felt as either weakness or weirdness.

But couldn’t the world use a little more weakness (let’s change that to meekness, as that sounds a little less….weak) and friendliness?

After all, Jesus himself said (paraphrasing a bit here), “blessed are the weak and the weird.”  Wouldn’t we all be a little better off if we could stop competing long enough to just smile and say hello?  Is that really that hard?  Seems so, at least for those with most of their brain cells still intact.  Maybe we could learn to use those less for money and mayhem and more for simple kindness, meekness and generosity.  What do you think?