What a Great Greeting! "You look happy today!"

I was waiting at the bank to make an offering to the credit gods, a man was in front of me in line and he greeted the teller with the words "You look happy today!".

I think this is a much better greeting than "You look exhausted" or "Are you sick?".

I think affirmations and positive statements are really important.

When my daughter was little I remember her running around like she was powered by something we should harness to solve global warming. Invariably she would try to totally defy the laws of physics and get hurt.

When she got hurt she would look at us with "the look"; I called it "looking for the call" like in baseball when a batter looks at the ump for a call when he doesn't swing. The look asks should I get upset. And if you looked at her in horror or panic she would lose it and cry and cry and cry and feel pain. But if you looked at her and smiled, a smile that said "we love you good try getup and try again", she would go back to playing.

There is of course a caveat to all this; if she really did hurt herself bad by god you were at her side like an army of medical rescue technicians.

The trick was making the right call.

I say for the most part the right call; the courteous call is to say: "WOW you look happy"...

Please note: the story also applies to either one of my sons -- so you can substitue "he" for "she".