...from Martin Buber, the influential Jewish thinker on the subject of the vital importance of relationships to human happiness:
The unavowed secret of man is that he wants to be confirmed in his being and his existence by his fellow men and that he wishes them to make it possible for him to confirm them, and not merely in the family, in the party assembly or the public house, but also in the course of neighborly encounters, perhaps when he or the other steps outside the door of his house and the greeting by which they greet each other will be accompanied by a glance of well-wishing, a glance in which curiosity, mistrust, and routine will have been overcome by a mutual sympathy: the one gives the other to understand that he affirms his presence. This is the indispensable minimum of humanity.
According to Buber, these encounters need not be particularly intimate, sustained, or formal.
