A teacher, walking to class, passed a girl sitting by herself by the flagpole in the middle of the quad.  Thinking about other things, he sent a glancing smile to her and passed, as any of us might have.  He did notice that some steps behind him walked a young man.  When the teacher entered the door, he looked back at the young man.  In the background by the flagpole sat the girl, but she was was crying now.  No one else was in sight.  The teacher asked the boy what he had said to the girl to make her suddenly cry. The young man appeared confused.  "I didn't do anything," he murmered, "I just said 'Hi." "That's  strange," said the faculty member, "look at how she's crying now."  And anyone could see that she was.  He asked the boy if he knew the girl; the boy said he did. "Go back and talk to her," suggested the teacher.  The student looked reluctant, but nodded and  turned again toward the flagpole.... The following morning, perhaps not entirely by chance, the teacher was passing a classroom of students just disbanding.  Out the door came the girl, and he began a  conversation with her.  Later, over coffee, he asked her about the events at the flagpole the prior day. "What did you say to him?" he asked. "I said, 'Hi.'" she answered. "And what did he say to you?" "Just 'Hi.'" "And that's when you cried?" "Uh-huh."  And she smiled a little. Further conversation showed that even though those two words were all that had been said, that's not all the was meant.  The "conversation" went something like this: His "Hi" just meant  something like "I acknowledge the existence of another student."  It was a perfunctory greeting, the kind of "Hi" we all use several times a day, nothing more.  The same kind the teacher had used. But hers, when she spoke to the boy, meant something like "I want to talk to you, I  need to get to know you, I am lonely, how fine to see someone else here today!"  When he passed her by he felt indifferent, but she felt deeply abandoned.  And so she suddenly and unwillingly cried. The two  meanings passed in the afternoon sun without touching, like two birds whose flights cross, but where one is flying flying hundreds of feet above the other.  Each of these students perceived a meaning that wasn't there.  Each missed the meaning that was, because that meaning, like the students' own perceptions, existed on on different levels.