If someone asks, ‘How are you?’ how do you respond? Be honest. Is there a physical shift in your body language, a sigh, perhaps even an eye roll before you say, ‘Busy!’?
In the last few weeks, I’ve observed, ‘mental’, ‘insane’, ‘relentless’ and ‘bonkers’ in response to this question and it’s made me wonder if there’s been such a seismic cultural shift that we actually wouldn’t know how to navigate formulating an answer without front-loading it with vocabulary that implies overwhelm and distress.
The truth is, I’m guilty of this too and have been for years. I can almost remember when I shifted from ‘Fine, thank you! How are you?’ when asked ‘How are you?’ to something a little more, erm, dramatic.
But, can you remember when it happened to you?