How are you?
— J. Chr. de Vries
Two acquaintances meet on the street, let us call them Frits and Denit. They might know each other from work, the club, or maybe they occasionally run into each other in the pub. They’re not real friends but they like each other. They haven’t seen each other for a while, busy with work, or holidays, illness, and all the other usual life stuff.
Then Frits says to Denit, “Hello Denit, long time no see. How are you?”
Everyone typically responds, “Yeah, good, and you?”
But Denit doesn’t respond that way. He thinks: if Frits had asked me All good? then I could have gotten away with the answer that I still haven’t won the jackpot in the national lottery, that I have to go to the dentist tomorrow, that my seventeen-year-old cat has passed away last week, but for the rest things are okay. However, Frits didn’t ask if ‘Everything is good’ but ‘How are you?’ So then Denit answers, “Is this a question or a greeting?”
Now Frits has a problem. If he would have choosen the most comfortable answer, ‘a greeting’, then he would indicate with this response that he has no interest what so ever in Denit’s well-being, which is impolite or even unkind. But if he would answers, ‘a question’, then Denit could say that things are not going that well, or even that they went badly. Then he has to listen to Denit’s whole story, and to be honest, he’s not really looking forward to that.
Meanwhile, Denit understands the dilemma he has put Frits in and he tries to find a way out of the impasse.
“Usually, it’s meant to be a greeting,” Denit quickly continues. “But honestly, I find that difficult, most of the times I’m inclined to take it as a question, probably due to my slight autistic tendency, which makes me often take things literally.”
“You’re playing the truth card,” says Frits.
“I’m not so sure that the truth can actually be played,” Denit then replies.
“Well, everything can be a game; you can consider life to be a game.”
“Dying is part of life, so, in that case dying is also a game.”
“I didn’t say: life is a game, but: you can consider it as such.”
Denit thinks about this for a moment. “Dying as a game, doesn’t sound pleasant.”
“Why should a game always be pleasant?”
“That’s the reason for playing, isn’t it, that it’s enjoyable? And educational as well. Learning is nice. Curiosity is a virtue.”
“I agree with you in this matter,” says Frits, “but the fact that something is a virtue doesn’t mean that it can’t cause pain. And dying seems to me a painful act. Considering it as an unavoidable, useless given, an additional trait, seems to me unbearable. Dying is not something that happens to you, but something you do yourself; it’s a tragic act.”
“This conversation is veering quite far from its usual course,” thinks Denit, “that can’t be the intention of a casual greeting.”
“Indeed, usually not, because it’s unnecessary. Such a turn is actually already inherent in that greeting of ‘How are you’,” says Frits. “In many cases, the lie disguises itself as truth, but in a game, truth can disguise itself as a lie.”
— Bonnemort, October 6, 2023