“How are you?” IDK.
“How are you?” A simple question. These days, hard to answer. I have some suggestions for you.
Most of our communication is habitual and automatic.
We pass a friend on the street. The friend says, “How are you?” We answer, “Good. How are you?” The friend responds, “Good.”
It’s all routine and perfunctory.
When I was in high school, I grew tired of the routine greeting. When a passing friend asked, “How are you?” I would smile and say, “Terrible.” My friend would usually respond, “That’s good.” A few friends, very few, would stop in their track, confused. They didn’t know how to respond because they had actually heard what I said, and I didn’t give the automatic, expected response.
In the early days of Trump 2.0, I am concerned about the future of democracy and the rule of law. While I have some days when I slip into a funk, I am doing surprisingly well most of the time. But, when friends ask me how I am, I don’t know how to respond.
I don’t feel like saying that I am doing “good,” even when I am. I want to give a nuanced and textured answer. I want to say something like, “I feel like I have a dark cloud hovering above me at all times, but, despite this, most days, I am taking care of myself, and I am trying to stay engaged. Most days, I am doing surprisingly well, especially considering what is happening to our country.”
Most people don’t want to hear this, so I have been thinking about ways to respond that acknowledge our times have become surreal, that the lives of many Americans, including supporters of our president, may soon be damaged beyond repair, but, despite all the Crazies around me, “Hey, I’m doing better than the average Ukrainian.”
I’ve been trying to come up with some stock responses, but I don’t like any of them. I have tried to explore different approaches, as Cyrano did in the famous scene of Cyrano de Bergerac. Here are some of my early attempts:
Metaphor: “I’m just riding my surfboard into the apocalypse.”
Gothic Film: “He’s still alive.”
Shakespearean: “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.”
Irony: “Groovy. Just groovy.”
Sartrean: “Trying to find the exit. All fucking day long.”
Religious (Christian): “Waiting on the Rapture.”
Religious (Jewish): “Here we go again.”
Religious (Buddhist): “Aummmmm.”
Olfactory: “The sea of shit is only up to my armpits.”
Hippie: “I thought that acid trip in 1969 was bad.”
Psychotherapy: “I am trying to feel my feelings, but they don’t want anything to do with me.”
Big Lewbowkian: “This abiding shit is getting old.”
Mindfulness: “At this moment, I am realizing that this moment is pretty fucked up.”
Inauthentic Optimism: “I’m eating a lot of kale and hoping for the best.”
Orwellian: “1984. 2016. 2024.”
Madisonian Optimism: “Checks and balances. Checks and balances.”
Nihilism: “I’ve been eating at Burger King a lot, and it’s not going to end well, but it will end, and, hey, none of this matters anyway.”
Conradian: “The horror. The horror.”
Tragic Optimism: “Finding ways to love my neighbors.”
None of these responses quite captures my feelings about the “it” of Trump 2.0, except maybe the last one. I will keep working on it.
If you have some suggestions, share them in a comment.
Though not original my favorite and much used response is "Pretty good but I'll get over it" followed by "I always do." A lot of responses lately agree with me. Take it as you will.
Platonian: “just staring at the shadows on the wall, figuring out what’s real and what’s not”