Keeping Up The Pretenses

Uhm... do you realise just how smoothly the response "I'm fine, thank you" rolls of your tongue when somebody asks you "How are you?" That reply is so commonplace that it should be challenged on its authenticity every time. Because I am utterly convinced that more than half the time it's said, it isn't even within close range of what is really going on in the life of the person who said it.

Have we all perfected the art of pretending or what? And have we all grown so accustomed to putting on pretenses that it becomes too natural for us... 'til the point that what we pretend to be really becomes who we are (in the sense of who we live our lives as) and who we really are, how we really feel inside, just gets lost and evaporates without a single trace?

Too often we practice these same lines, with the same replies, and amazingly we derive satisfaction from it without ever questioning if what is said is what really is.

In other words, do we really care? Why are we content just with a mere verbal assurance, that the person before us, the person we are conversing with, spending time with on the pretext of love or concern or some other high virtue, is alright and has their life together? Why do we even ask how they are anyway? Is it to convince them that we care? Or as so-called evidence that we can use to conclude that everything's okay and there is no real cause for concern, even though the irrepressible gut feeling is that there really is something that is the matter with them?

And why do we not tell it like it is to someone else when they ask us how we are doing? Is it for fear that they would not understand? Or that they may make things worse by how they react afterwards? Or that we'd finally see things as they are: that perhaps the other person doesn't quite care as much as we hoped they would?

From my personal experience, the reason I don't speak up very often about how things really are in my life is for the plain reason that nobody's really interested to hear my long, elaborate replies about why everything is going wrong for me right then and there, and the dozens of doubts that are tormenting me. For the few times I tried to say something more - hinting just a bit at the fact that perhaps my "I'm fine" is not quite as fine as my words are potraying (doing this by means of a contradicting facial expression, perhaps) - the other person only seems to listen intently for awhile. Then you can almost visually see their minds jump up and wander off from concentrating on what I'm saying by the time the "oh" response escapes their mouth. And from then on, it's all going downhill. Sometimes it comes to the point where I'm yabbering on and on and it's so self defeating because I know it's practically useless. A waste of time. All the things I'm saying are just flying by them, without even the slightest effort on their part to reach out and at least try to grasp what I'm saying.

On the flip side, perhaps we say the cliched phrase "How are you?" simply because we have no better way of putting across to someone we don't know so well that we really do care about them, without sounding too intrusive or imposing. I know I've encoutered a couple of situations where I've felt exactly this way. And if we do say it sincerely enough, the other person may actually get the sentiments we are trying to convey. Then it's perfectly fine, of course. It may even be appreciated that we bothered to ask.

Another possible reason why we perhaps succumb to repeating this overused question at the start of almost every conversation is because maybe, we're short of ideas on how to kickstart an engaging chat with a particular someone, and hoped that they'd say something in their reply that we could perhaps take hold of and use to propel the conversation further, tranforming it into something much livelier. For instance, the mention of family could lead to further inquiries on their welfare or how relationships with their next of kin have been of late. Reference to a recent holiday or business trip could be followed by encouraging the person to elaborate more about their holiday/trip, how did they find it, what did they do, etc.

And so, for all these reasons and more, this dull, hackneyed phrase of "How are you?" and its [almost required] accompanying response, "I'm fine, thank you" lives on in our society today. Amusing, is it not? Yet it is rather a sad state of affairs. Wouldn't life be a little less confusing if we'd all just be unafraid of being blatantly honest and speaking our mind, spilling out all the pent up thoughts and emotions in our minds and hearts? But alas, we are creatures of habit. So onward the habit goes, and we remain content with the ever familiar replies.