Five letters and one of the most powerful words I know.

When I was a teenager the idea of striking up a conversation with a girl terrified me, left me openly sweating. Then one day my mum told me the secret.

“Tony, the art of conversation, of all conversation is to find out what your companion is interested in and then ask her about it.” she said in her cultured English voice.

Good Lord, I wish I had known that earlier. Mum was giving me the keys to the kingdom, the combination to the vault. The moment I opened it I discovered a lifetime of conversational treasures.

And were I to be asked the secret to conversation, all conversation I would say, “Begin with ‘Hello’. If you think about it, even say it out loud, you can hear ‘hello’ for what it really is. It’s a question.”

Hello (would you like to talk)?

Hello (are you okay)?

Hello (can I help)?

It gives the person you’re talking to a chance to decide. It has never failed me and to this day I have had countless conversations with perfect strangers, all of which began with ‘Hello’. It is the gentlest of salutations, perfect for the task at hand.

Hello (yes let’s talk)

Hello (I’m busy)

Hello (I don’t want to talk)

‘Hello’ in any language is, I think, one of the most powerful words I know.

“Hello”, I addressed a woman sitting on the next lounge chair. It was January 2019 and Mac and I were in San Pancho, a small ocean side town in Mexico about twenty minutes north of Sayulita on the Pacific coast. It was a beautiful warm sunny day, the waves crashing rhythmically, pelicans fishing along the beach with their usual purpose.

I had not yet met the woman I had said, “hello” to, it was just a polite non-intrusive salutation that would, I knew, unlock the answer to the unstated question, “Would you like to talk?”.

“Hello”, came her quick reply, the tone providing my answer. And we began what became a three hour conversation, one of the most engaging I have ever had with what was essentially a perfect stranger. Mac was sitting beside me, engrossed in a novel. I made sure Mac knew she was welcome to join in but she demurred. She was in her happy place and she knew I was in mine, her friendly, curious, talkative Tony had found his match.

Johna Townshend (her father had wanted a boy he was going to call John) was retired and in San Pancho with her husband Kent, who was off swimming and running on the beach. Johna told me that Kent was actually training for a two week trek that summer up the White Pass and Chilkoot Trail, the old Gold Rush trail in the Yukon. Impressive enough as that was to me, made all the more so when I learned Kent was 73. He was to be trekking with his thirteen year old son.

“Pardon me,” said my inside voice, “Did you say your son is thirteen.” There had to be a story here. And there was. Johna and Kent lived in California and had retired two years earlier. They had a 43 year old son living in Utah who had died after a lifelong battle with addiction, leaving his son Myles with his mother. It was all too much for her and after six years in and out of treatment for addiction she gave up custody of Myles to Johna and Kent who then adopted Myles. So here they were with a lifetime of dreaming about retirement and the things they would do, parenting a thirteen year old boy.

Johna told her story without a note of resentment or doubt about the decision. She said that once they had made the decision to raise Myles they dropped everything and embraced the role. Johna told me that it had not been without its challenges; Myles had known a hard life and had never lived in a stable loving home which typically came with the rules and expectations of family life. It took him some time to adjust. Until he understood the life Johna and Kent were offering he couldn’t embrace it. Kent was hoping this two week trek they were embarking upon would help Myles unlock what he had buried deep inside him.

It was spellbinding. Johna and I talked all afternoon, sharing our stories and thoughts with an intimacy that can happen on occasion with strangers, fueled by an awareness that you will never see each other again. There was more of course, much more. Johna was a Democrat which helped. This was early in Donald Trump’s presidency and they were reeling, not knowing how to absorb the concussion from this wrecking ball of a man, for many Americans turning all that they loved about their country, on its head. We talked about health care and taxes. Johna was fascinated with Canada’s universal health,

“Of course you pay high taxes, don’t you?” she asked rhetorically.

“Sure do” I replied, “but we get cradle to grave health care and many other benefits for our tax dollars. How much do you pay for your private health insurance?” I asked.

“$24,000US” she replied, “but that doesn’t include copays and drugs and we have to add in Myles now.”

I was gobsmacked, “Well if you add your real cost of taxes and health coverage, you pay a ton.” I offered.

And so it went, a roiling rollercoaster ride of conversation through the afternoon. I’d catch Mac’s eye from time to time and she’d give me that, “Well aren’t you just having the best time” look, and I was. Time passed and the conversation ended and we parted company with Johna and Kent. I left with a real respect for these two perfect strangers and a refreshed enthusiasm for this most muscular of little words, ‘hello’.

“Hello” I said to the newcomer to the ‘10am Small Dog Dog Park Group in West Kelowna’, “How are you?.” I was just being friendly, it hadn’t been too long since I was just such a newcomer, bringing a very young Edith, our new French bulldog to the park for some socializing. Turns out Brad had a story and I can’t for the life of me tell you how we ended up where we did but within four or five minutes he was telling me an extraordinary story from his early years in the Canadian Arctic.

He was a seventeen year old kid (forgive me if any seventeen year old grandchildren are reading this, I mean no offence, it’s just that I’m seventy-one and seventeen is young, to me). The sea ice mid winter is twenty five feet thick, strong enough to bear the weight of a military aircraft or a commercial jet. Brad was wildcatting in the Arctic on the oil derricks several kilometres out on the ice. He was sent to pick up men from a jet bringing in 135 replacement workers and was witness to one of the worst aviation disasters in Canadian history. The plane landed on the ice but the pilot miscalculated and overshot the thick ice on the runway and broke into the ocean.

Most of the men perished and Brad, all of seventeen years old, raced out with other rescuers to try and save some of the men. They managed to save two men before the plane disappeared into the waves. Good Lord, my eyes were as big as saucers, I had known Brad for maybe fifteen minutes and been told an absolutely stunning story.

“God how terrible. How did you deal with that?” I asked the obvious question. “I was seventeen.” he answered, “I was too young to know any better. It hit me harder when I got older.” What a story and it was all because I had said, “Hello.”

“Hello” I said to the woman as Mac and I were walking down to The Spit at Deep Bay, one early Spring day. She was hard at work weeding her garden.

“Hello” she replied, hungry for connection, in those isolating Covid pandemic years. And before a minute had passed she was sharing a very sad story with us about her daughter. This was in May 2021 and she had not seen her daughter for two years. Her daughter was a cardiologist in Calgary and was raising her young family there and she had contracted the Covid 19 coronavirus. It had devastated her body. Now two years later she had suffered brain damage, organ failure and paralysis on her left side and been told she had no hope of recovery. Ever. It is hard to write this, it almost feels invasive but she wanted to share her story. It was hard for her. She stifled tears in the telling but she got to speak with us and to hear our voices in reply. Not all conversations are easy but all talking is. After about twenty minutes we moved on, touched and humbled by her story. And I was reminded, again, what a big lovely word ‘hello’ really is.

“Hello” I said to the friendly looking woman at the Departure Bay dog park in Nanaimo. ‘Hello’ has a high success rate at dog parks. I think it may have something to do with the kind of people who own dogs and who take them to dog parks to socialize. Anyway, random theories aside, within moments she told me she’d just won a million dollars. I had two reactions; one expressed by my inner voice “Sure, and I own three homes“, the second expressed by my outside voice “What are you doing telling a perfect stranger at a dog park that you just won a million dollars”.

But who was I to strip a perfect stranger from her fantasy world. I told Skeptical Tony to be quiet and allowed Inquisitive Tony to be heard.

“That is fantastic news.”

“I know, all my life I’ve lived from month to month. I’m a single mom and have so much debt.” It came pouring out of her, her relief palpable and it seemed authentic. Literally, five minutes earlier I had never even spoken to this woman.

“Here” she said, “look at this.” She showed me a screenshot of her bank account. It showed $1,000,045.14

I smiled. Skeptical Tony was literally laughing at me. But Inquisitive Tony had the floor.

“What’s the $45.14?”

“What I had in my account when I won!” I was still uncertain but the fantasy, real or otherwise was fun to chat about.

“My name is Tony by the way.”

“Good to meet you Tony, I’m Cheryl.”

“Well, I’m off then, great talking to you Cheryl. And listen, don’t be telling any more strangers about winning a million dollars.”

Of course I told my wife about the encounter and this woman I’d met and her tale of winning a $1,000,000 and even in the telling I remember thinking how far fetched it must have sounded.

And then there it was. Two days later the headline on a local TV news website:

“LADYSMITH WOMAN WINS A MILLIONS DOLLARS” and a photo of Cheryl Gourley, my Departure Bay dog park friend.

‘Hello’ had done it again.

I am so sure of the power this little five letter word wields that I would love to write a book about it. I would call it ‘Hello’ and it would be filled with stories of people and their lives, each chat beginning with ‘Hello’. Or perhaps better yet, a podcast or whatever the next iteration of digital audio streaming is called. I envision travelling the country, or North America, or beyond and just talking to people; everyday people, famous people, young people, old people, it doesn’t matter who but each podcast would begin with a simple “Hello”. This may be the better approach, at least if my thesis about the power of the human voice is to be applied, it is. I may still do it, the technology is easily available and easy to use and I would love it if that becomes real. But in the event I don’t do it or just simply run out of time because of that damnable ‘getting old’ thing, perhaps you might.

But that aside, there is something you can do at any time and you can start right away. My children have heard me say ‘hello’ thousands of times, it never made any difference to me whether I knew the person or not. Not a day goes by that I don’t say “Hello” to all manner of strangers. And not a day goes by that ‘Hello’ doesn’t pay some reward and every once in a while it pays off in spades. It is a joyful word. It is a healthy word, in a world where so many of us feel isolated and estranged and unheard. It frees us to talk. Give it a go. I promise you’ll find yourself in conversations with the most interesting people; perfect strangers, everyday people with the most fascinating stories. People who’d been hiding in plain view, right in front of you. Try it out. Go on, give it a try. Just say it out loud, it will never let you down. Promise.

“Hello.”