“How are you?” - superficial or not?

Surprise, surprise: it's up to you ;-)!

Honestly, I don’t understand why people get upset and say “It’s such a superficial question to ask!”.

Mainly, because this question can be whatever you want it to be, just a thoughtless phrase, or a super deep conversation starter. You pick yourself!

Imagine this situation:

(A) You plan to go into the grocery store, ready with your list at hand to walk through the aisles & just get what you need for dinner. You enter the store & get greeted “Hi! How are you?”, you answer: “Hi, thanks, I’m fine and you?” “Thanks, I’m fine too!” is the reply and you continue with your shopping venture.

(B) Imagine the same situation, but you enter the store, and no one notices you, the workers even have a grumpy face, are distracted, don’t seem to care or even see you… or worse, they sneakily follow you to make sure you don’t steal anything.

How do you feel in situation A? How do you feel in situation B? Be honest.

I have been in both of these situations. I was born in Poland & grew up in Germany and situation B was basically the common setting there. Unwelcoming, grumpy faces, people don’t like to make you feel welcome as a customer and it feels just off to be in the stores.

While when I lived in the US, the basic greetings of “How are you?” “Fine, how are you?” immediately gave me a better feeling, more welcoming & wanted in the store. I also always feel welcome in stores in Sweden, where I live now. So I would always prefer situation A, anywhere I am.

Here is the thing:

I was aware that the people might not have wanted to start a deep conversation, and I also didn’t want to have a deep conversation with them, maybe I should have tried it ;-)? For me it was enough to be met with a couple of friendly words, an acknowledgement of existence and that’s it.

Is that superficial? I don’t think so. A positive situation was created, I felt good about it & made them feel good by replying and smiling. Perfectly fine with me.

I have heard many German’s complaining about the superficialness of people in stores in the US & I felt it was ridiculous given the fact that customer-welcoming is not something that is of high priority in many stores in Germany.

But! What I noticed, when I walk around with an open gaze, a positive attitude, a smile on my face and saying “Hi!” myself, then this makes a difference. With these simple tricks, a superficial, quick store encounter can be made pleasant for everyone. In every country!

Now imagine this other situation:

You notice that your friend, or any other loved one, seems to be off, maybe sad, stressed or just out of balance. Asking him or her “How are you?” can be the perfect easy start into a deeper conversation with that person, if they want to talk about it. Because depending on the way they answer, it can give you hints to continue and ask deeper, or not.

The same counts the other way around: if you are sad or off-balance and a trusted person who you have a great relationship with asks you “How are you?”, you most likely can be very honest & share your struggles and worries and reply more than “I’m fine.”

Again: its totally up to us, how we want to be met and how we want to meet others in this journey of life and this simple question is just an easy starter.

What I sometimes do to make sure I really mean it when I ask the question, I add to it something more specific, like “How are you feeling?” or “How is your life going?” or I pick up on something we talked before, just to make sure & signal that I truly care & am open for a more deep conversation, not just small-talk.

But even that type of small-talk can be fine in certain situations. Either because I dont feel like speaking about deep-things, or I feel I dont want to speak with that person about it, OR I feel that the person is not open for it, then I can stick to more general topics and still make it a pleasant interaction.

In the end: its all on us, how we approach each situation and person in our life and judging a sentence or question for its superficialness without the context is just pointless I feel.

What do you think about that?

Love,
Daria