How many greetings are the real deal?

Everybody’s always glad to meet me. Over-the-top. Ecstatic. They’ve missed me!

My word-processing program welcomes me back to a file I just exited. Checkout clerks, ticket-takers, cash machines bid me good day. A sales slip assures me, “We appreciate your business!!” with redoubled exclamation points. Sherrod Brown, candidate for reelection, “hates to bother” me. Minority Leader Jeffries knows how busy I am.

I don’t condemn these congratulants. Momentarily they convince: I’d be glad to greet me too! Only their effusions are worse than feigned; they’re false – presets – intended to soften me up, reduce my resistance to appeals, coax me like a sex worker to step inside.

Especially irksome are purportedly “personal” communications which cozy up to me by my first name (typically misspelled – that second L must be a typo). I could easily direct my computer to “personalize” this message: “Good morning, Sally! How you feeling today! Glad to hear it!” Could but won’t, promise, because such bonhomie would be a lie. With many of you I’m on a first name basis. With others I share a deeper intimacy that omits appellations.  How often do I call Jane Jane? Only when shouting down the stairs. My most formal spousal address is a pronoun – “Hey, it’s me” – if dialing from an unfamiliar phone.

Twenty-plus years ago (can it be!), when I was zigzagging across America in my RV, fleeing sadness, I dispatched occasional email bulletins to friends about my exploits. I composed them to amuse, as I do these. One day I asked my beloved daughter if she’d read what I sent. “I’m not one of a group,” she replied, albeit more saltily. “I’m your daughter. If you want to talk to me, not ‘to whom it may concern,’ go for it.”

Where’s the harm in a pleasant word, you ask, even if unmeant?

Insincerity is dust, each speck dirties, each falsity pollutes, till the moral atmosphere’s a fog where nothing’s sure. Manners barricade us against candor, which might offend. I lie like a rug to strangers and enemies, whose good opinion I count for nought. If any passerby wishes me good day I mirror their sentiment automatically, meaning nothing by it: “You too.” Pleasantries lubricate society, more power to them.

Love, though, is not polite. Love offers itself as is, not tarted up for sale. Love does not chirrup “Great!” when the answer’s “Grim.” Love can be mad, sad, glum, frantic, panicked, because it trusts its recipient with its truth. Love prefers the risk of revelation to the desolation of isolation. It may hurt to confess “I hurt”; it hurts worse to hurt alone.

Raised a liar, immured in manners, my late-in-life ambition has been to make every word true. No intentional lying here. My candor is circumscribed (please heaven!) by consideration: there is much I mustn’t say for it might mislead, repel or, worst of all, bore. I temper my moods not to spoil our moment. But I try to make every word as true as I can, no hidden agenda, no sashaying, no guff: THIS IS WHAT I THINK, this instant, best I can tell, as frankly as I dare. Do I shape and buff my prose? You bet: I mean it to glow. Are today’s assertions revised by tomorrow’s cerebrations? You bet: they wouldn’t be honest otherwise. But do I ever delude, dupe, fool, hoodwink, misinform, bilk, cozen, gull, hoax, scam, bullshit? Not if I can help it.

Modernity’s a sterile desert of liars. How refreshing, as brief respite, our oasis of true.