I’ve never been good at goodbyes she said, and now I know that he isn’t either.  I don’t know why that reply to a recent blog post is sticking in my head.  I think my fear is that knowing you’re not good at goodbyes might hold you back from the hellos.  I can’t think of two people more destined to say hello than these two people.  I don’t know them nearly as well as I know their energy, especially hers.  It has depth and breadth and magnitude. They are made of circumstance and substance.  I know, I am too.

But I’m good at goodbyes.  I’ve said goodbye to people, dogs (both living and dead), places that I thought were mine (but not so much), perfect kitchens, cottages that could easily be moved to the Cape, and a life that was far too hard to live.

I’m good at a certain kind of hello, the kind that gets people to talk to me about themselves and their stuff.   The kind of hello that puts a room at ease while putting insulation around me I can pull off pretty well.  People always say hello to me, always. My friend Sandra says, “It’s the face…”.

I had a huge Ah Ha moment the other morning while walking the dogs.  Down the street came our friend Steve and his dog Karma (yes the dog’s name is Karma) and the girls lunged.  Tails wagging, happy crying and woofing and it occurred to me that they weren’t lunging to attack, they just didn’t know how to say hello.   Oh no.

Do I know how to say hello?  Saying hello to someone standing right in front of you, for no other reason than to make their acquaintance, can be difficult if your capacity to trust has been diminished.  What will their reaction be?  Will they like you?  Are they what they appear to be?  Question after question go through your mind at lightning speed and somehow the hello never comes out of your mouth.

Goodbyes are based mostly in the fact that people change.  If you changed, if they changed, someone changed.   Hello brings the promise of things changing, something going right, things falling together.  Marilyn Monroe said it best, “I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”

Not entirely sure that I should follow her philosophy but I get it.  It’s the yin and yang.  So now what?  Practice practice practice?  Examine your motivation?  Take a chance?  All these things require courage and a certain vulnerability that will come in time if only…you can learn to trust someone other than just yourself.

Trusting in myself, oh OK that I get it.  There is a saying from my old life, what’s the worst that can happen?  Too often in my old life I found out exactly what the worst was that could happen.  But now, with every week and month and year that goes by I can see what the best is that can happen.  I just gotta know like I know that hello won’t bite me in the ass.  There it’s out there.