Date:         Sun, 11 Jan 1998 11:19:01 EST
From: "Fable, Thy name is Legion" <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Subject:      [WRITERS] FILLER: Hi, How you doing?

[sorry, today is a bit of a scramble as the Japanese Association of
Greater Boston has a New Year's party...I just started reading this
book and thought I would share the introductory story with you all...]

From Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman ISBN 0-553-09503-X

(p. ix) "It was an unbearably steamy August afternoon in New York
City, the kind of sweaty day that makes people sullen with
discomfort.  I was heading back to a hotel, and as I stepped onto a
bus up Madison Avenue I was startled by the driver, a middle-aged
black man with an enthusiastic smile, who welcomed me with a friendly,
'Hi, How you doing?' as I got on, a greeting he proferred to everyone
else who entered as the bus wormed through the thick midtown traffic.
Each passenger was as startled as I, and, locked into the morose mood
of the day, few returned his greeting."
        "But as the bus crawled uptown through the gridlock, a slow,
rather magical transformation occurred.  The driver gave a running
monologue for our benefit, a lively commentary on the passing scene
around us: there was a terrific sale at that store, a wonderful
exhibit at this museum, did you hear about hte new movie that just
opened at that cinema down the block?  His delight in the rich
possibilities the city offered was infectious.  By the time people got
off the bus, each in turn had shaken off the sullen shell they had
entered with, and when the driver shouted out a 'So long, have a great
day!' each gave a smiling response."
        "The memory of that encounter has stayed with me for close to
twenty years.  When I rode that Madison Avenue bus, I had just
finished my own doctorate in psychology--but there was scant attention
paid in the psychology of the day to just how such a transformation
could happen.  Psychological science knew little or nothing of the
mechanics of emotion.  And yet, imagining the spreading virus of good
feeling that must have rippled through the city, starting from
passengers on his bus, I saw that this bus driver was an urban
peacemaker of sorts, wizardlike in his power to transmute the sullen
irritability that seethed in his passengers, to soften and open their
hearts a bit."

So long, have a great day!
tink

(clap your hands for the virus of good feeling!  let's have an epidemic!)