Hello and Goodbye

you will know you really mattered when it’s time to say goodbye

S.G

What is only two stages of our interactions really matter and of the two one is more important than the other. For me hello and goodbye are those two stages. When we first encounter someone we want to make the best impression. We take the time to find out about the person place or thing we are about to experience for the first time. First impressions matter.

Can I get a hello?

They matter especially when it may be the only impression we get to make. They matter when we want to set the right tone in the relationship going forward. Also, new experiences can be traumatic if you do not start on the right footing a pleasant greeting can do the trick though to alleviate tension and make those experiences pleasant ones. On countless occasions I have passed someone and said “hello”, “good morning”, only to be stared down or totally ignored. Trust me, I felt so self- conscious and bit embarrassed that I made a fool of myself (well I’m never doing that again, until the next time). So hello does have the power to brighten someone’s day and could very well be the human contact someone is waiting for. An invisible bridge that connects individual.

But what about goodbye?

Have you ever found yourself in the process of leaving or having already left, and not say goodbye? Did you leave feeling guilty that you did? When my grandmother who raised me died, there was an even deeper sense of loss, guilt and shame, because the night before she died I had spent some time waiting for her return from doing a heart test. It was getting late and I decided to leave because she was to come home the next day anyway. What would it hurt to wait till then to see her? She never came home and so I never had a chance to tell her how much she meant to me. It was too late. For that I felt as if I had somehow let her down; I did not wait to say hello but more importantly, the goodbye.

When we don’t say goodbye, we leave room for shame and guilt to manifest. When we do not say goodbye, many may feel that may be we believe they are no longer worth the time and effort to acknowledge them as we leave them or they leave us (then they think, “after all they got what they wanted”). Neither do we nor the persons we leave behind have a sense of closure, we are left to carry this guilt, to nurture it if we allow ourselves to do, for the rest of our lives. Sometimes we do not realise that the reason we are unable to “move on”, to be positive as we journey along is because we have not properly said our goodbyes. There are many persons who hate goodbye, but saying goodbye is a part of life – whether or not we like it. One of the most reliable thing in this world is change. Change will always take place, hence the popular phrase, “the wind of change”. By failing to say goodbye, we are saying that we are not ready to close the door on something that needs closing and therefore cannot open ourselves to the great things that await us.

Hello goodbye…

If we try to be clever for a minute, we can see goodbye waiting in the wings when we say hello; there is no way of moving to another hello, without a proper goodbye. When we realise that in every hello is a goodbye then we will be prepared when it’s time for someone to take their leave of us or ours of them. So, as you reach out and say hello, remember that you will need to say goodbye at some point, so you can say hello to something new.