Making Contact

For the past several years I’ve made a regular habit of going to the gym in the morning. For a long time I said hi to the folks behind the desk as they swiped my card, got dressed, exercised, showered, and left. I may have nodded to someone who made eye contact, but for the most part I kept to myself. And for a long time I enjoyed the relative anonymity.

But a few things happened that have changed all that.

For one I’ve come across some articles about the importance of making contact. Everybody knows that affability is important to success in life, but on a more significant level, connecting with others is valuable to one’s health. Contrary to ideals of rugged individualism and romantic notions inspired by Henry David Thoreau (who wasn’t as isolated as many think), it turns out independence is actually not that good for us.

I also encountered a fellow exerciser who apparently does not know the rules about staying silent in the locker room. It seems natural for Bruce, I’ll call him, to look at a total stranger a few padlocks away and say “Hi . . . how are you doing?” And Bruce seems to mean it when he asks. I think it’s safe to say Bruce and I have become friends because he took the risk of saying hi to a stranger.

I thought about going online and citing all kinds of research to back this up, but I don’t need to—not for myself, anyway. I’ve learned from folks like Bruce, and from my own feeble attempts to connect, that offering a friendly gesture here and there is a better way to live. These days my gym feels like a little community; I know a bunch of people by name now. In fact, I’m becoming attached to these people. One guy, Larry, died a few months back, and I can honestly say I miss him.

All of this is so obvious it would not need stating unless, of course, we didn’t do it.