Hullo

Making friends has never really been a problem for me. I was an early starter. It began my mother said, with the 4 to 6-legged kind and ended up with your run-of-the-mill human bi-ped that had an appetite to rival even the hungriest Hereford calf I brought home. My mother, well she preferred the cattle beast because they at least had the decorum to masticate with their mouth closed.

I think it’s easier to make friends when you’re young because you don’t so much ‘make’ them as ‘collect’ them along the way. I was and still am an avid collector. And making friends has kind of gone up market in its execution because now you network or you use a social utility. It sounds for all the world like a modern day version of the Bionic Man (part automaton, part human). And sometimes to me, it can feel contrived.

How? Well, social networks and networking aren’t new, infact they’re as old as time. Maslow’s Hierachy of Needs is as valid today as ever it was when he developed the theory. The bottom line is that we human beings want, need, like, love contact with someone or something other than ourselves. We want to, need to, like to, love to relate and be in relation with and to someone or something else.

Where I come from it starts with hullo or Haere Mai. So hullo, haere mai. Tell me what it is in your language?