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4
Oct
2017
“Hi! How are you?”
“Just fine. And you?”
The routine exchange of pleasantries is one of the social graces that grease the axles of human interaction. We say the words to acknowledge the other’s presence -- to till the ground, as it were, for our real reason for getting together with that other person. Which, often, is not personal at all.
Unfortunately, we rarely take the words of the ritual seriously.
I had a lawyer friend in Toronto who loathed idle chit-chat. If you greeted him, “How are you?” he commonly barked, “Don’t ask unless you mean it!”
So I almost always asked him how he was anyway, just to see what would happen.
And he, to his credit, answered as if I really did mean it.
Categories: Soft Edges
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