{"id":69285,"date":"2024-02-12T23:29:10","date_gmt":"2024-02-12T23:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wellvyl.com\/magazine\/?p=69285"},"modified":"2024-07-19T16:46:14","modified_gmt":"2024-07-19T16:46:14","slug":"hej-howdy-and-other-small-steps-in-the-right-direction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wellvyl.com\/media\/hej-howdy-and-other-small-steps-in-the-right-direction\/","title":{"rendered":"Hej! Howdy! and Other Small Steps in the Right Direction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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On the campus of Texas A&M in College Station, where I spent four years as an undergrad, there are dozens of traditions that go back to A&M\u2019s legacy as a military institution. Perhaps the friendliest of those traditions is the practice of saying \u201cHowdy\u201d to strangers as you pass them on campus (\u201cHowdy\u201d is an abbreviation of \u201chow do you do?\u201d). The degree to which students are devoted to this practice depends on their tenure at the university (Freshmen are typically more enthusiastic than Seniors), their affiliation with A&M\u2019s Corps of Cadets (the military ROTC program that comprises 3-5% of the student population), and the degree to which they have internalized the university\u2019s norms and philosophies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In November, NPR aired a story that made me reminisce about those years in College Station. The focus of the story was a public policy innovation in northern Sweden in the small city of Lule\u00e5. It seems that the Swedes, known for their affordable furniture and for sending the U.S. Women\u2019s national soccer team home from the World Cup, are not known for being the world\u2019s most gregarious with strangers\u2014and the government of Lule\u00e5 is concerned, primarily about the reported loneliness of its residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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They\u2019re not the only ones concerned. In November, the World Health Organization (WHO) called the \u201csilent epidemic\u201d of post-pandemic loneliness a \u201cglobal public health concern,\u201d on par with a 15 cigarettes per day smoking habit in terms of wellbeing and posing a greater health risk than obesity and physical inactivity. \u201cSocial isolation and loneliness do not just harm individuals,\u201d the WHO\u2019s Commission on Social Connection<\/a> warns; \u201cthey also have a negative impact on entire communities and societies. Research shows that [communities\u2019] safety, prosperity, and effective governance depend greatly on the quality of the social connections within its neighbourhoods, workplaces, and schools.\u201d Global estimates suggest<\/a> that up to one in seven adolescents and one in ten young adults are lonely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cGiven the profound health and societal consequences of loneliness and isolation,\u201d U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy believes<\/a> \u201cwe have an obligation to make the same investments in rebuilding the social fabric of society that we have made in addressing other global health concerns, such as tobacco use, obesity, and the addiction crisis.\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In response, the City of Lule\u00e5 has launched a campaign they\u2019re calling, \u201cS\u00e4g hej!\u201d (say hi!), complete with placards on buses and workshops in schools to teach the practice. The city\u2019s goal in fostering more social interactions, however small, is not merely to make Lule\u00e5 a friendlier city but to help residents \u201cfeel seen,\u201d according to a city worker<\/a> credited with hatching the idea. In Sweden, but also world round, we aren\u2019t interacting with each other to the extent we used to, says Stockholm School of Economics professor Micael Dahlen<\/a>. \u201cThis accelerates in winter time when we\u2019re outdoors less, social less.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Does this practice have the potential to be misunderstood? Probably. It\u2019s unfortunate, but we\u2019ve grown accustomed to being greeted by strangers who want something from us: spare change, our phone number, a signature on their petition, our contact information for their promotional offer, etc. At A&M, I myself was lukewarm about our variety of the \u201csay hi\u201d tradition and found it off-putting at times to be greeted with a forceful \u201cHowdy!\u201d from an unfamiliar face with whom I had not even made eye contact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But does the Howdy tradition make A&M friendlier and contribute to social wellness? Texas A&M is one of the Lone Star state\u2019s two largest universities, together with the University of Texas at Austin, which has its own traditions\u2014to be sure\u2014but not the gregarious \u201cHowdy\u201d that Freshmen at A&M are indoctrinated with. To my knowledge, no academic comparison of wellbeing or loneliness between students at the two universities has been conducted, at least not one that included the Howdy tradition as a potential factor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fortunately for us, the WHO claims that \u201c[p]romising solutions exist to reduce social isolation and loneliness, ranging from broad national policies to psychological interventions for individuals.\u201d The City of Lule\u00e5\u2019s campaign to help residents feel seen may be a small step in the right direction, but I\u2019m hopeful that small gestures like this one in Northern Sweden could snowball into measurable social connection and become role models for the rest of us to try, wherever it is we call home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cA journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.\u201d \u2013 Lao Tzu<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On the campus of Texas A&M in College Station, where I spent four years as an undergrad, there are dozens of traditions that go back to A&M\u2019s legacy as a military institution. Perhaps the friendliest of those traditions is the practice of saying \u201cHowdy\u201d to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":625,"featured_media":70047,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"1775","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1775],"tags":[1814,427],"class_list":["post-69285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-wellness-news","tag-friendliness","tag-social-wellness"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellvyl.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellvyl.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellvyl.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellvyl.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/625"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellvyl.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69285"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wellvyl.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70048,"href":"https:\/\/wellvyl.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69285\/revisions\/70048"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellvyl.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellvyl.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellvyl.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellvyl.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}