Counting My Blessings

One of my favorite pleasantries of etiquette in the English-speaking world is the familiar “God bless you” that follows a sneeze. It’s a random act of kindness that was invented before the concept of random acts of kindness was even conceived. For many people, saying a good-natured “God bless you” is a reflex, as automatic as picking up a ringing phone. But such well-intentioned, automatic blessers lose touch with the actual message behind “God bless you,” which I’ve always taken to be the wish for good health despite a symptom of illness in someone with whom you share physical space.

This is an era in which one driver will shoot another who cuts him off in traffic; people steal one another’s identity just to access riches; and kids blow up folks on video screens in the name of entertainment. Yet “God bless you” is a gift to all sneezers that remains with us, a vestige of an earlier time when it was a good thing to smile upon your neighbor and perhaps even let him in front of you in line. According to social mores, anyone can say “God bless you” to anyone—even a convict might say “God bless you” to a sneezing cellmate.

Granted, as the influence of the church has abated over the years, “God bless you” has largely been secularized into simply “bless you;” but its spirit remains for the believer and atheist alike. My friend Vance, a contentious type, doesn’t like to say “God bless you” to sneezers. Ironically, Vance is a devout Christian—but he doesn’t throw God around loosely. However, he doesn’t say “bless you,” either. As much a word parser has he is a churchgoer, Vance feels there’s no reason to bless a sneezer. A more appropriate response, he argues, would be to say “Congratulations.” He’s read that when you sneeze, your heart actually stops beating; so really what we should be doing is congratulating the sneezer for getting the heart to beat again. Now Vance also questions the validity of “How are you?”, but that’s another commentary.

I know others who don’t bless. My wife doesn’t bless me anymore, either. I suppose familiarity breeds non-blessing.

“Bless you” has its equivalent in most languages. The Spanish, perhaps more pragmatically, say “Salud!” to sneezers. It means, simply, “Health!” But the Japanese, interestingly, have no sneeze response akin to “God bless you.” Japan is a country in which there’s little organized religion. Could it be organized godlessness that makes these people uninterested in blessing sneezers?

I’ll bless anyone, anywhere. It gives me an opportunity to connect, at an airport, a doctor’s office, a funeral. I love when strangers bless me, too. I feel a little awkward, I admit, when I sneeze two or three times, and I press the limits of others’ beneficence. But if I sneeze repeatedly and someone blesses me in kind, I know there’s a heart beating in sync with mine.