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I’m from the US. “How are you,” is indeed a very shallow question that expects a very shallow and prescriptive response. I’ve seen where people answer it honestly, and when they walk away the person asking says something to the effect of,
“god, I didn’t need his whole life story.” Experiences like this make me more hesitant to answer honestly. The better you know someone, the more this rule starts to bend, but that doesn’t help with establishing new connections. Even with people who are close, there is some expectation to keep things pleasant and not unload bad news on them, or seem like you’re bragging about good stuff, when asked how you are. This is why you’ll often see movies where someone asks, “how are you,” and then after the generic answer they follow it up with, “how are you really?” In other situations, especially with good stuff, people feel like they need to be invited to talk about something exciting in their life. If they have something fun planned for the weekend or did something fun last weekend, they’ll ask someone else what they did, hoping to get that same question back, so they can have an excuse to talk about what they did. No one ever really told me this and it took me longer than I’d like to admit to figure it out. |
I almost never say 'good' in response to that question, even to a coworker I don't know well. In my friend groups, usually people will be straightforward about how they're doing as well. Maybe people don't know how to say 'bad' without following up with a story? It's easy once you start doing it. "Not great, but it's fine" or "I'm just keeping along / taking it day by day" is a fairly common response to get from me, especially lately, and it's always honest. Sometimes I will just say "TBH this week completely sucks for me" before continuing with what the conversation was about originally. If things are going well I will be effusive in my (still short) response ("I'm doing awesome actually"). And I do care about how the other person is doing when they respond. I've even gone so far as to ask, after finding out about bad news later in the conversation, "Damn, why'd you say you were doing well?".
I find it to be a deeply useful way to start a conversation. If you ask how I'm doing and you don't know me well, and I say something to imply I'm not having a good day, it completely changes the way the conversation should be conducted. Same goes for the other person's response. You always start every conversation on the same page ('how impatient / stressed is the other person right now?' is one of the most important pieces of context you can have). Over time, I've even found that it has the benefit of making me reflect on a regular basis on how I feel in the moment vs how I'm actually doing on a longer-term scale.