Last week I received the following email from a former fitness client I’ve kept in touch with:

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“Hey Alex,

Wondering what you’re up to lately since you’ve been quiet on FB. How’s the new biz going? How’s life? Any good coffee lately?

Chris”

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Initially I clicked reply, and began to write out the usual surface level answers.

“Yeah, I don’t enjoy Facebook these days.”

“Business is good, man.”

“No complaints over here. The suns out in Vancouver, I’m going to Spain in a couple weeks, and my arms keep growing.”

“Good coffee? Do you even know me?”

…Then I erased them all.

Here’s why:

A major contrast I’ve noticed during my time travelling and living in Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean, between there and the western world is us western folk tend to float from day-to-day on surface level interactions.

Overseas, in my experience, when people ask how you are, they genuinely want to know, and quite honestly seem to care more.

This genuine manner is something I’m trying to cultivate more in my own life, largely because it lends to deeper, more impactful relationships, enjoyable conversation, and it’s nice to get the feeling people actually care.

In place of my traditional western world surface level responses to Chris, I penned *proper* answers to his questions.

It turned into a personal state of the union address from yours truly.

If you wanna know what goes on behind the scenes of these emails, you can read my answers, which prompted the comment, “you need to teach a course on how to spill your guts on Facebook, elegantly” here:

https://www.facebook.com/alex.mullan/posts/10156471224417394

(The post is public so we don’t have to be friends in order for you to see it)

_A. Mullan

Questions? Hit reply.