I've spent my adult life flummoxed about how to gesture to greet people. As a teenager, I tended to favor the "teen boy upward head nod" which is a gesture that to me carries a homeopathic dose of swagger—exactly the upper limit of the amount I was ready to risk, but without the sense of shame I might have felt by lowering my head. As I type this, I realize this sounds like one of the "Animals of the African Savannah" moments in Mean Girls so I guess that movie's on to something.
To me, waving seems best delivered enthusiastically and with lots of side-to-side motion, which is useful for actually getting someone's attention, but felt like too much for everyday use. But just holding an open, or partly open hand up feels a little too papal. The punk rock/skater friendly middle finger was never going to fly for me. I spent a few years saluting(?!) because it was a clearly-defined gesture, but it doesn't sit right for several reasons.
In San Diego people throw shakas. I think it was seeing that that got me thinking about my hand gestures again (and when I say "thinking" I mean at a subconscious level. Typing this is the first time I've examined this in any sustained way. Just to be clear). I don't have a take on who should and shouldn't throw a shaka other than that it doesn't feel right for me to do it.
Which brings me to the peace sign. At some point between late high school and early college it felt important to me to make it clear to myself and the world that I was not a hippie. I'm not totally sure what caused this but it mattered at the time. During the pandemic I started listening to "Time Crisis" and that brought me back to listening to the Grateful Dead, and it was just a matter of time before (sometime last year) I started greeting people with a peace sign. For my purposes, it's perfect: it sends a message that's important to me ("peace"), it doesn't require a lot of motion, it doesn't make me feel like I'm pretending to be the pope, and it is, by definition non-threatening. And, while looking up photos for this post, I discovered that it's heavily associated with Ringo*, and I can't argue with that.
*Side note: why is it that there's this common to the point of nearly universal "aging rock star" look of sunglasses, lots of earrings, and leather jackets? I get it if you were in Motley Crüe, but so many people have been dressing like that for decades who NEVER dressed like that when they were at the peak of their fame. Of all the eras of music fashion to choose, why did they all end up on that one?