Call me lazy, but the sheer number of possible greetings-in-passing, conversational gambits, and substitutes for “hello” finally wore me down. Like an old-fashioned answering machine with no mazelike menu of options, I narrowed them all down to a simple, habitual “How’s it going?”

“It’s going,” approximately two out of three people reply. This deeply philosophical response leads me to believe that my humble query is more profound than it seems. The mystical “it” is going somewhere, everyone seems to agree, but by some unspoken accord these folks make no claim to know how, or even where – let alone why. More important than the destination is the quality of the journey, this seems to imply, as if we can only transcend our limited lifespans by savoring and enhancing the inherent beingness of living, here and now.

But what to make of the vast range of not-so-mystical responses every third passerby spontaneously shoots back? This question too is a rather leading one. It has led me to believe that exchanging various forms of “hello” is one of the most mysteriously significant of our daily cultural activities. Yet the academic literature on the subject is surprisingly scanty. Postmodern greeting practices, it seems, are either too subtle or too obvious to attract the scrutiny of sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, or even abstract expressionists. The field has been left wide open for us poets.

I have therefore launched an investigation. My research thesis is entitled “A Theory of How It Goes.”

Evolution of a Southerner

I moved to the South after college without really meaning to, landing in the rural north Georgia county where my mother and grandmother grew up. According to my theory, I stayed and became a Southerner primarily, though subconsciously, because I loved the Southern custom of exchanging greetings with random passersby.

Passing on the sidewalks of downtown Calhoun, people of all ages, skin tones and circumstances would invariably look one another in the eye, nod, smile, and often speak. Even roaring past each other on the two-lane county roads, people would wave. Total strangers – even long-haired migrants from up North – were not exempt from this routine courtesy.

Maybe that’s what first started me thinking. Aside from food, water, oxygen, clothing and shelter, the most essential thing to any human being is recognition from his or her fellow humans. Not the kind of recognition where they name a building after you or, God forbid, a freeway intersection, but the simplest acknowledgement that you exist: a nod, a wave, a hello, a harmless platitude or two. At bare minimum, even an inarticulate meeting of glances sends a powerful message of acceptance and connection.

This sense of communal acceptance is so essential to our sense of self that, like the proverbial fish out of water, we are never fully aware how much we rely on it until we are forced to do without. On crowded city sidewalks, people passing in opposite directions generally ignore each other unless they run into an acquaintance. If this priceless gift of recognition is exchanged between strangers, usually they are strangers who see or sense an affinity based on clothing, hair, skin pigment, skin decoration, and so on.

Amid the vast throngs of strangers in the cities, I theorize, people can only psychologically survive by banding together into tribes. All the people who meet your eyes and acknowledge your existence as you pass – whether friends, strangers, or acquaintances – are your tribe, provided that you acknowledge them in turn. A casual “How’s it going?” reverberates deeply in our being, not only bonding us into tribes by mutual acknowledgement, but validating each person’s very existence as an individual through the mystical meeting of eyes.

A Survival Unit Called a “Species”

In the languages of indigenous nations all over the world, the tribe’s name for itself usually translates as “The People.” Non-members by definition are something less than human. For many millennia, this attitude was supremely useful in helping to bond individual families into a survival unit called a tribe, united in defense against potentially dangerous outsiders.

Since “civilization” is a rather recent mutation in evolutionary terms, this tribal psychology is very much alive in our brains today. But the tendency to divide into tribes and consider other tribes less than human is no longer helpful. It has become a counter-survival trait in our species.

Fortunately, each of us has the power to expand our personal tribe to include all sorts of people who do not resemble us in clothing, hair, skin color, and so on, merely by meeting their eyes and acknowledging their existence with a nod, a wave, a harmless platitude. And if my theory is correct, it just might be one of the most powerful things we as individuals can do to change the world and save the planet.

People pushing through a turbulent mass of strangers must seek most of their psychological nourishment from occasional meetings with members of their tribe amid the multitude. This is the root cause of loneliness, a disease that belongs exclusively to “civilization” and its crowds. But seeing every person in the crowd as a potential member of your tribe can be a healing experience, both for you and for the “stranger.”

Consciously meeting the eyes of stranger after stranger can feel exhausting at first. But once it develops into a habit, it amounts to the same or even less expenditure of energy as avoiding those same eyes used to be. Some might consider it the equivalent of a spiritual practice. But if “spiritual” is not the tribe you belong to, consider it the equivalent of football, gymnastics or tennis practice. Sooner or later, we’ll all end up on the same team . . . or our survival as a species grows increasingly doubtful.

Of course, many of the eyes you attempt to meet will be avoiding yours. This is not necessarily rejection; take it as another way of acknowledging that you exist. Maybe the person is simply well-nourished by a large happy tribe somewhere, and not yet ready to merge it with yours. Or maybe the person is preoccupied just then with enormous personal burdens, and the acknowledgement of your eyes has been a tremendous help, even though at the moment he or she is unable to return the favor.

Join the Experiment!

In order to experimentally test the Theory of How It Goes and prove its usefulness, I have developed the following game. Its object is to acknowledge as many people as possible in the course of the day by engaging their eyes and uttering the ritual greeting, “How’s it going?”

People caught by surprise, in autopilot mode, or not fully awake will respond more or less honestly to the greeting. If they are players, wittingly or not, they will return the greeting (or a similar one). As in the Asian game Scissors-Paper-Rock, players can then compare scores to see who’s in a more enthused, exalted, or enlightened state at that particular moment.

But the ultimate goal is not a tournament in spiritual one-upmanship; it’s to enroll or entice everyone on Planet Earth into the same tribe. This will happen when we discover that through our different social circles or tribes and their links to others, ad infinitum, we are in fact connected to every single member of the human race.

The break-even response to score points in the game is the venerable Zen precept, “It’s going.” The score for this response is zero, acknowledging the Ultimate Void at the heart of Reality. Responses like “Pitiful” and “Rotten” are their own punishment; negative points need not be awarded. Scores for more elevated responses are as follows. (An extra point may also be given for each verbal “exclamation point” used.)

0: “It’s going.”
1: “Not bad.”
2: “Okay.”
3: “All right.”
4: “Middlin’.”
5: “Fair to middlin’.”
6: “Fair.”
7. “Good.”
8: “Pretty good.”
9: “Pretty darn good.”
10: “Great.”
11: “Excellent.”
12: “Wonderful.”
13: “Splendid.”
14: “Super.”
15. “Superb.”
16: “Fabulous.”
17: “Terrific.”
18: “Marvelous.”
19: “Fantastic.”
20. “Stupendous.”
21: “Outasight.”
22: “Outathisworld.”
23: “Acrosstheuniverse.”
24: “I am the Walrus.”
25. “All is One.”
26: “Ommmm . . .”

Additions to this list are not only allowed, but encouraged. One could say that’s the whole point. Just insert them into the above scale of values wherever they fit, and score accordingly.

Keeping score, on the other hand, is not the point. If you find yourself actually totaling up the numbers, you’ve entered a new category where the object of the game is now to delve deeply into each exchange, learning as much as you can about each new acquaintance you meet on the sidewalk before moving on.

If participating in this experiment gets you into trouble with someone determined to remain a stranger, simply explain that you mistook him or her for a member of your tribe, which is so wildly and unpredictably diverse that the only way to recognize a fellow tribesperson is to utter the secret ritual greeting . . .

“How’s it going?”

Note: As always, these are my personal opinions and do not represent any organization I’m involved with. If my words resonate for you, please share widely. Contains no AI ingredients!You can subscribe at StephenWing.com (and unsubscribe at any time). Read previous installments of “Wingtips” here.