One day after hours of staring at my computer screen I decided to make an excuse for a short walk inside the building where I worked. I was slowly walking down a hallway and I glanced outside through the glass wall as I used to do. Suddenly one Asian woman who was about to pass by me from opposite of direction greeted me, “hello” she said, smiling. I reacted instinctive and smiled back. I tried very hard to recall whether I knew her and I was wondering if I had forgotten her. We started to chat and then I knew she was the cook in our restaurant and she probably was the reason why the lunch on that day was so tasty. She is from Thailand. She introduced herself and told me something about her life. She said to me she likes to greet almost everyone, the bonds of friendship would make her feel happier in her life. She asked me to call her “Elaine”.
The conversation erased all the loneliness and depression of mine at that moment. I started to think afterwards. In our lives, we experience all kinds of feelings, sometimes we are happy and delighted, and at other times we are like Marathon runners; we “hit a wall”, face obstacles etc. At times of difficulty in our lives, we are weak no matter what kind of education level we have had. This weakness can sometimes conquer one’s mind and destroy him. I recall a recently happened tragedy in Canada. One young Chinese who had two P.h.d.’s jumped out from a highway bridge and committed suicide, leaving one young wife with two children behind. He must have been determined to do so, because he actually was good at Kungfu, he could have saved his own life if he had fallen by accident. People think that it was the dark thoughts on his mind that killed him. If he had expressed his problems to someone else, the tragedy might have never been happened.
I began to reflect on some of my own experiences.
After all these years of working life, people like me have been used to the custom of being a bit isolated and being a bit lazy to greet people. I sometimes feel shy to greet others, especially during a period when transferring to a new environment. When facing work problems, it is not a problem to sit down, concentrate and solve it. We find the help which we need by using the one of the intelligent products of modern life- email. Gradually we even lose the interests to contact people face to face and bring a smile to each other’s faces. This situation shouldn’t go on. The vision of silence is beautiful, might be necessary for technical thinking. But too much silence is definitely not always helpful for our lives. We need to exchange our views on lives and information for a better living. To build a friendly atomosphere will make one’s day brightening with sunshine. The positive life attitude will do much help on one’s carrer and professional life, it even could help to produce more productive and efficient work result. This probably related to the terms what are often called “team work, team sprit”.
We woudn’t want to see everyone was talking to themselves and suffering from the depression. Why can’t we all be like that Thai woman and greet, chat with our co-workers upon meeting them? I admire this Thai woman’s braveness to take the initiative to greet to strangers. The smile will break the barrier of coldness between two or more persons.
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