When someone asks how you are,
what do you say? Are you one that says “I’m fine thanks” or are you the one
that goes into detail about how miserable your life is? Well, has it occurred
to you that a person is merely extending a courtesy by asking how you are?
Why do some feel the need to
list every problem they have in life just to answer one simple little question?
My mother was guilty of this “open complaining” issue. If someone asked her how
she was, she would go into a 20 minute dialogue about her whole day, what hurts
this time and what illness she thought she had. Usually, I ended up cutting her
off by saying “I just asked a simple question”.
Everyone goes through some trials and
tribulations, and yes; misery does seem to love company. The humor in this simple little question is
the fact that if you don’t ask a person how they are, the person gets
offended. You can, in general, walk
around offending people unintentionally and never know it.
Let’s not forget the death of an
interview; “How are you? Tell me a little about yourself”. One would guess that
I’m fine thanks, how are you is slightly insufficient. No, the need to know
more about you just opened that door between sharing your life story or, at the
very least, leaving the person with a thought of how boring and needy you
really are. Answer too broadly and you get the non-rhetorical response of “Well
alright, I have others to interview and someone should be in touch soon”. Answers to vaguely you get the “Ok, do you
have any questions for me? No? Great, well thanks for your time”. Either way,
that was the slam of the door locking as you left with your tail between your
legs.
It’s amazing how a simple question yields
so many different responses and emotions. No matter how you answer this
question, the person that asked is going to have a “that’s nothing…. story”
Really, do you honestly want to hear about every little detail of someone’s life?
Try running into an old friend at the mall and ask them how they are; you will
get a whole litany of happenings since the two of you last spoke. Wow, imagine
if it’s a person you haven’t seen in years, you’re standing in the middle of a
mall hearing stories of things you probably aren’t really interested in hearing
about hoping that person doesn’t notice you looking at your watch.
I think I have the perfect solution; at
least it works for me. If I want to know more about how someone is, I usually
write them and say something like “Catch me up on the past few months or years…”
That opens the door and shows the person you are interested in what they have
to say. That affords both of us the chance to talk about family, jobs, losses
in the family or whatever. Personally, I’d like to think I’m pretty good about
keeping in touch personally with a select few. I really enjoy catching up with
a lot of people and following their children’s sporting events.
Now, if you ask someone how they are and
you get a long drawn out ‘woe is me’ story, try this…”I’m sorry to hear that”
That closes that door pretty fast and lets a person know you won’t be indulging
in their daily dose of self wallowing about life’s misfortunes. I think we
could all write a portion of a book about life’s misfortunes, but some would
have you believe they are the only ones experiencing some type of setback. Some
divulge more information to a person asking how they are then they do their doctors.
Seems a bit backwards that people would want to put out a life story to people
they haven’t seen or talked to in a while, yet can’t give their doctors more
than a yes or no answer. Life’s little irony I guess. ~ Just my two cents
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