(Ten-minute read)

Remember when people use to initially judge you by your handshake. It formulated a picture of a person we were meeting for the first time.

In the span of a few seconds, it lay the foundation for how others perceive and feel about us — and we about them.

“It was wet,” “It was creepy,” ” It was firm,” It was crushing,” “It a Mormon handshake,” “It a Mason probing handshake”, enthusiastic, vigorous, prolonged, high-fives to fist-bumping.

A handshake was a globally widespread, brief greeting or parting tradition in which two people grasp one of each other like hands making impressions that have a very long shelf-life based on a brief but important meeting.

Your handshake is the business card you leave behind.

Believed by some to have originated as a gesture of peace by demonstrating that the hand holds no weapon.

It is a reassuring tactile touch that we as social animals share is essential for social interaction, social harmony, health, survival, and security, as well as for communicating our true feelings.

It serves as a means of transferring social chemical signals between the shakers.

What is even more startling is how long we remember those bad handshakes — sometimes we remember for decades.

Today we pay for items with the swipe of our phone or by inserting a small plastic card into a reader. The old handshake just doesn’t have its place anymore.

We can also spend thousands of hours clicking a mouse over a small image on a computer screen. Nothing is real, nothing is said – only ones and zeros racing around the globe in small packets of data.

The world of technology continues to tractor us into a world absent of looking at one another in the eyes the Art of the handshake is dead.

With, Social media, Face recognition, Instagram, Facebook, Smartphones, Emails etc our most valuable currency of the handshake is evaporating and being replaced by digital signatures or passwords, that are undermining our trust in each other.

It’s no wonder that so many people get something so simple as a handshake wrong. 

Take the Politician’s Handshake:

Two hands to cover or cup the other person’s hands twisting the other person’s hand so that yours is superior or playing hand jujitsu to let the other person know you are in charge is just rubbish.

In the real world-shaking a person’s hand allows you to establish your friendliness and accessibility. 

For example meeting your future in-laws for the first time, your first job interview.

It might be true that in the future daily and weekly media will be more and more electronic, but physical media will always exist.

Stand in front of the webcam and send a digital emoji and you could be shaking hands with the devil. 

You cannot reproduce a handshake with meaning electronically.

This is a part of the beauty and the freakiness of the internet no handshake required.

Its no wonder there is grooming.

There was a time that a person had to put on nice clothes and go out into the real world to meet a love interest.

Today, you can be “out there” without ever having to go out- online dating.

You can even engage in a virtual relationship by using email or instant messaging. It is possible to get to know a person on a relatively deep level without ever meeting at all.

Customs surrounding handshakes are specific to cultures and can offer some real benefits.  Take Brazilan negotiators they touch each other almost five times each half-hour where there is no physical contact between American negotiators. 

In postmodern society, superstitions don’t have much of a place, for most of history they have a played a huge role in shaping culture and society before the arrival of the handshake.

The internet cares not what you do. You miss out on real contact with people.

It is affecting our ability to connect with others as equals. Not being able to manage the normal tasks of adult living resulting in more and more limper handshakes. Which leads them to problems with society and unable to get along with others.

Although teens are staying in constant contact via the Internet and texting, these friendships do not foster trust and intimacy the same as face-to-face contact.

The century’s old practice to seal a deal may seem quaint but its importance in the future will tell us whether its a robot or not.

As the appreciation of small things disappears; nature loses its brilliance.

Our planet is in a tight spot lets shake hands on that.

As we know there can be no peace no universal action on anything without it. 

All the verbal diarrhoea in the world cannot replace it. 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.