I'm not sure if this is something personal to me. The way I judge if a negative emotion is normal is whether or not comedians made skits about it, and this one I've never seen.
If I am speaking to someone, whether new face or old friend, if in response to 'How are you?' they reply with 'Perfect :D' I instantly lose any interest in chatting to them. I opened the conversation, I am the one requesting the pleasure of their company, and now they have made it swiftly clear that their lives are simply as good as they can get.
What do you say to that? My first reaction is to be fairly bitter. "Oh good, i'm glad" I will reply, seething with the knowledge that my life is actually fairly shoddy at the moment in comparison. It's made 100 times worse if you know the person has achieved things in their life you cannot qualitatively add to; like having a 5 year long happy relationship or travelling the world. Of course they are happy with their life having not spoken to you in weeks. They have no need to, and so they don't.
While there's nothing wrong with people having happy lives, becoming aware that a person does not require you for them to be fulfilled is like being told by a girl "Hi. I cannot begin to explain the magnitude of the fuck I don't give about you.' It's a precursor to the class reunion. "What have you done with your life since high school?"
"Well, er.. I.. um. Oh bollocks to it. I'm very single and I very live about 50 miles from where I grew up. I need something or someone to come along and make me feel perfect enough to not have to chat to half my friends without them starting it."
I suspect you're taking this a bit too seriously :). My experience is that when someone asks "how are you?" they really don't give a damn how well you are, and in fact they don't even expect an answer most of the time. And quite often people will say "perfect" to hide the fact that they are just as miserable as you are. So take heart...
ReplyDeleteIf it helps, my stock answer to "how are you?" is "same as usual", which they can interpret however they like.
Perhaps I am at that. It's quite a challenge balancing serious underlying concerns (which these are) with avoiding exploding on temporary annoyances (...which these also are.)
ReplyDeleteI'll get it right sometime. Meanwhile, I love your standard response. I hope you don't mind if I appropriate it for my own use? :P