One of the best-kept parks in Jacksonville, FL is Ed Austin Regional Park, and a visit there inspired the creation of my concept "Say Hey, Jax!"
Let me explain.
Before the 2020 pandemic, I was a social butterfly. Always hosting some event or inviting friends over to dinner, I never seemed to have a spare moment to myself. So when the country began shutting down in 2020, a strange mix of depression and relief overwhelmed me.
No longer working in an office was freeing, however, my human contact was limited. While other friends were gallivanting about Florida, I had immunocompromised family members and so was less willing to be social.
Florida state and private parks offered inexpensive refuge—a chance to get outside my four walls.
Walking through Ed Austin Park was a habit I had built before the pandemic and offered continued escape in 2021. So in 2022, it was easy to continue strolling through the great outdoors.
One thing I noticed, however, was that where before, fellow walkers were friendly and ready to throw up a hand in salutation, now, people were slow to provide eye contact. When they did, they rarely said hello.
What had happened?
A few things had happened, as it turns out.
Even Jacksonville had changed somewhat from 2020 to 2022. According to a study conducted for Newsweek, 42% of Americans say they are less sociable than they were in 2019. 37% say that their friends are less sociable.
Jolanta Burke of Greater Good Magazine writes regarding an article provided by Plos One, a peer-reviewed collection of studies: "There weren’t many changes between pre-pandemic and 2020 personality traits. However, the researchers found significant declines in extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness in 2021/2022 compared with before the pandemic."
I don't want to bore you.
All that to say, walking through the park one day, I was disheartened by the lack of warmth I was encountering. The thought finally came to me, "When we make contact, people should say hey."
Then reality and responsibility hit me: I should say hey.
Determined to make a difference, even a small one, I began saying hello to everyone I encountered on the trails.
We can't ever go back to 2019, but here's the exciting thing: we can become better than we were.
We can elevate an atmosphere of friendliness in Jacksonville. We are more than a momentary flick of the eyes and a quicker pace past each other. We're better than that. We can become more connected as a community.
And it all starts with saying "hey".