"When you knock on a door, be courteous in your greeting.
If they welcome you, be gentle in your conversation.”
If they welcome you, be gentle in your conversation.”
(Matthew 10:12-13, The Message)
Greetings can be interesting. In English, for example, instead of a simple “Hello” we are likely to say, “How are you?” or if we haven’t seen each other for a while, “How have you been?” In the southern United States one of the most common greetings is, “Hiya doin’?” In the southwest that might be pronounced, “Howdy do?” a compressed version of “How do you do?” That was shortened even more to become just “Howdy.” It’s not that people really want to hear about your physical or emotional health. They simply want to acknowledge your presence within proximity of their personal space, sight and sound.
By the time we reach the age when the AARP corresponds with us more than our children, people don’t just ask “How are you?” because we might start telling them how we actually feel! They don’t really want to know about our chronic back pains or our depression over the fact that we just realized our retirement fund will probably be barely enough to buy a pup tent instead of the house on the lake that we had dreamed about. They don’t have time hear the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. They just want to hear, “Fine, and how are you?” to which they can respond, “Fine.”
Since I passed fifty, I have noticed how some people will greet me in the morning with “Did you sleep well last night?” Now that’s a simple, direct question that can be answered with a short, direct answer. I know they want a plain answer and I want to give them one. I also want to be honest in my answer since, by my definition, I might not have slept the entire evening in the restful, continuous, uninterrupted sleep of a ten-year-old child. So my answer is usually, “Yes, several times.” I might also answer truthfully, “I slept like a baby” which really means “I woke up every two hours crying because I had bathroom issues.”
Whenever someone asks how you are doing, what they really want to hear is one simple word—“Fine.” That’s how most people respond. “Fine.” But what in the world does “fine” mean? Look the word up in a thesaurus and you will see such synonyms as: well, in good health, satisfactory, adequate, acceptable, excellent or superior. It can also mean delicate, dainty, slender, thin or diaphanous (that’s what my dad might have called a ten-dollar word for fine).
You go to the doctor because you have fever, chills, diarrhea and nausea. The doctor comes into the examining room and asks, “How are you?”
“Fine.”
Come on! Why are you in the doctor’s office if you are really fine? So after the exam is over, he gives you the news that you have only three months to live because you have an aggressive cancer that has advanced beyond the possibility of any treatment. As you are coming out of the doctor’s office you run into a friend who greets you, “Hey! How are you?”
“Fine, fine.”
Yeah, sure. If fine means, “I am feeling the weight of my whole world crashing down on me right now”, then I suppose “fine” is an honest answer. Diaphanous might be more appropriate response in this case. Try it some time and see how people react:
“How are you?”
“Diaphanous. And you?”
OK, maybe not.
“Fine” doesn’t tell me a thing! When I ask someone “How are you?” and they respond, “Fine,” I usually follow up with something like, “In spite of everything and everybody?” If you are really doing fine, then it must be in spite of the bad things that are happening all around you and the way people are treating you.
I was an Emergency Medical Technician with a volunteer fire and rescue department in Texas for three years. When we would arrive on the scene of an accident the natural thing to do was greet the patient and ask how they were doing. Can’t you just see it? The guy is laid out on the street, broken and bleeding having been thrown from a vehicle doing fifty miles an hour when it crashed into a barricade and the conversation goes something like this:
“How you doin’ buddy?”
“Fine.”
“That’s good. Let’s see if we can get that arm stabilized so that bone sticking out won’t be too uncomfortable on the way to the hospital.”
“Fine, thanks.”
I rather prefer some of the Asian languages with more practical greetings that require a simple affirmative or negative answer. For example, in several East Asian and Southeast Asian cultures, the common greeting can be translated literally as “Have you had your rice yet?” That is a very subjective question that should be easy to answer honestly: yes or no.
Granted, some people really are doing well, not just in spite of the bad things or difficult people around them, but because of the good things that surround them. I suppose some of us really are doing fine, but I doubt if most of us really feel all that fine.
Instead of throwing around careless greetings and responses, what if we all decided to take our greetings seriously and showed a real interest in the people we meet and greet every day? What difference could such a small gesture make in your workplace? Then, after a brief word of encouragement, perhaps they could honestly say, "I feel fine, now."
© Copyright Dr. Larry N. Gay, August 2014.
http://mylead360.blogspot.com/ “Lessons on Leadership and Followership”
