Do you ever feel like things are moving too fast? I recall a pleasant experience I had a few years ago when I visited Atlanta. A cashier was ringing up my items and the conversation went like this:

Cashier: “How are you doing today, ma’am?” [pause]

Me: “Well, thank you. How are you?” [pause]

Cashier: “Great! [exchanges monies] Thank you and have a nice day!” [pause]

Me: takes my time placing items into my bag. [!]

The last, italicized line felt surreal because it other metropolitan cities I’ve visited, the cashier and the next customer in line are rarely patient enough to wait for the current customer to leave. Usually, the next customer is rung up as the other is putting away her receipt and items! Though cashiers try to appear friendly, they usually come across as annoyed as they blurt out scripted lines such as “please come again,” coupled with an anxiety-stricken face to ring up the next customer in line.

This simple yet profound experience has stayed with me ever since, due to a few reasons. First, I was struck by how kind and relaxed the cashier was. He paused after he spoke and seemed genuinely interested in wanting to know how my day was so far. Second, I remember being completely calm when I answered – the exchange felt authentic and natural. The cashier’s relaxed approach aligned his body language to match his words, which encouraged me to answer in an equally friendly and relaxed manner. And since it is human nature to piece together a person by evaluating someone’s tone, body language, words and motivations, the fact that the cashier was taking that extra second to pause, reflect, and react was consistent and authentic.

In today’s world we are constantly on the run. This rush – this go, go, go mentality – can be hard to turn off when one leaves the office. While in the office, we are inundated with what I call sensory overload – bombardment of tasks to complete, coworkers to entertain/appease, managers to read, politics to encounter, and mind games to play. The senses are hit by multiple kinds of information, most of which are not actual words, but gestures, tones, unstated expectations and other indirect methods that the brain must sort through and decode.

The brain’s need to “figure out” situations and people in order to find its bearings is a constant and tiring affair. Why must our internal narrative be able to explain what we encounter externally? In order words, where does the need to have everything “make sense” come from? Why do we feel uncomfortable when we are faced with a situation that we cannot explain, harmonize, and align with our beliefs, values and internal compass?

In their book The Path, Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh take a deep dive into the philosophy behind human relationships. I started the book a few days ago and am absolutely hooked. A part of the book that particularly resonates with me is the notion that rituals play a crucial part in our lives.

Puett and Gross-Loh start with an example of an adult playing hide-and-seek with a child. They describe the game as a ritual where both parties are able to create a safe space in which they can cultivate different sides of themselves. Both sides have agreed into a social agreement, which in turn creates a safe space for all to explore their identities. In this case it allows one to hide (the adult – normally the powerful and strong one in the relationship), while the other seeks (the child) thus feeling victorious, confident, and as if he s/he bested the adult.

Confucius (551 – 479 BC), the first great philosopher of Chinese tradition, called these social agreements “as-if” relationships, and included not only the agreements we willingly enter into, but also those we’ve been socialized to enter into. Examples of as-if rituals we partake in subconsciously are shaking hands with a stranger upon introduction, saying “please” and “thank you,” among a zillion others.

It is these rituals that can leave us depleted if we start operating on auto pilot:

“We use different greetings, ask different sorts of questions, and use different tones of voice when talking to different people. We usually do all of this unconsciously. We use, depending on whether we are talking to a close friend, an acquaintance, someone we just met, our mother, our father-in-law, our boss, our coach, or our child’s piano teacher. We modify the way we speak according to who we’re with because we have learned this is the socially appropriate thing to do. And because we are with different people and in different situations all day long, everything we do shifts constantly.” (p.29)

Phew! It can all get very tiring. Once on autopilot, we lose significance of the interaction and only experience it in order to move onto the next experience, without enjoying the present. Add to this miserable situation the fact that we respond to each other emotionally, and you can possibly set off a domino effect of negativity due to a negative encounter you had:

“All living things have dispositions, or tendencies to respond to things in certain ways. Just as a flower has an inherent disposition to lean toward the sun, and birds and butterflies are disposed to seek out flowers, human beings have dispositions too. Our disposition is to respond emotionally to other people.

…We often don’t even notice how constantly our emotions are being drawn out from us. But our feelings sway back and forth, depending on what we encounter…This is what life is about: moment after moment in which people encounter one another, react in an infinite number of ways, and are pulled to and fro emotionally.” (pgs. 26-27)

This makes today’s fast paced life style a hotbed of potential misunderstandings. Our society’s constant need to be “in the know” – whether it’s through our smart phones, tablets, or social media accounts – pushes us to keep on top of information and to keep anticipating what is next. This sort of hyper alertness leads to tiredness and a nerve wrecking sense of not being informed enough, which is the antithesis of being mindful, powerful and purposeful.

Confucius teaches us to invest in rituals as a way to create space that ultimately will cultivate other sides of our fragmented selves. His approach advises a deliberate mindfulness and mental stability that allows for calm, pause, stability. This sense of purpose will attract sincere and meaningful interactions that will, in turn, hone our own responses to be more deliberate. In refining the way we react to situations, we “move from a state where we just randomly respond to things emotionally (qing) to a state where we are able to respond with propriety, or ‘better ways of responding (yi).’” (pg. 27) To me this means responding intentionally, instead of operating on autopilot and responding as we are conditioned to do so.

And maybe it was his sense of stability that struck me most about the Georgian cashier. His conversation and his pause entered me into a kind of as-if interaction, encouraging me to mirror that behavior with equal wholeheartedness, which is why I still remember that simple, yet profound interaction.