MANNERS

How Are You?

What’s the Right Answer to This Polite and Meaningless Question?

Photo by Fabian Gieske on Unsplash

I have never been good at responding to “How are you?”

When somebody greets me like this, the honest and literal-minded part of my brain wants to take their rhetorical question seriously, and actually tell them how I am.

But they don’t actually want to know! Not really. It’s just a polite, meaningless question. They want a polite, meaningless answer.

Like? “Fine, thanks.”

Kylie Craft tells us, in a post about the little lies we all tell each other to navigate our way through daily life, that she often responds to “How are you?” with, “Living the dream!”

Is Kylie always living the dream?

Of course not.

But, she explains, “Telling them that your day, “Sucks a bag of d786s!” is not appropriate.”

I could adapt Kylie’s response. But? I’ve found something I like even better.

I recently noticed that whenever anyone asks my pal June,“How are you?” she responds with “How are you?”

You’d think it would be rude to answer a question with another question.