How Are You? {and why we should keep asking it}

Yes, I do want to know.

I get that you doubt me. Experience has taught me to skim this question and offer up the expected responses:

“Good, and you?”, “Couldn’t be better!” and the more local one, “Ok la, coping”.

I did once attempt to actually answer the question, and started launching into some detail about what I was going through. The poor person looked at once flummoxed and frustrated.

Right now, everyone seems to be going through the same thing  in a billion variations, and we can well be too tired to ask.

Historically, this question has been asked for more than three hundred years, its earliest use traced to Anglo-Saxon origin and often related to an inquiry about one’s state of health and had variants including:

How is it with you?

How do you today?

How goes the world with you?

Mockery becomes humans, so we have this record of an exchange between a man and his dog from a 1748 translation of Terrance’s Comedies:

Gnat[ho]. Gnatho greets his dearest dear Friend Parmeno with his best Wishes: how are you?

Par[meno]. On my Legs.

Gnat[ho]. Pshaw, I know that : — — but dost thou see Nothing here that thou dost not like ?

Par[meno]. Yes, you.

Understandably, you and I have both thought and heard it said that this question should be tossed. Really, why bother asking if we aren’t interested.

I disagree.

We have to keep asking this question.

Here’s why.

The person asking it gets a chance to interrupt the typical self-absorbed heart-brain circuitry. Sure it is a fetch to claim this will develop the needed quality of empathy, but it does help force us to focus, even if only so momentarily briefly, on another person.

Secondly, homo sapiens need meaningful emotional connection. While this question may be posed as one is passing another along the corridor, and probably won’t lead to a lengthy discourse and disclosure, it is far better than an icy non-recognition of a fellow human being.

As an Asian where words aren’t the currency of interest, where affection is more often expressed in acts of service, I remember feeling so good the first time I traveled to Australia and was greeting everywhere by total strangers.

But yes, we have reasons to be cynical.

Why expect anyone to ask since everyone is fighting some battle?

Why get asked if the asker isn’t really going to wait around for a proper answer?

Why ask If i am not genuinely interested?

These are all valid.

But rather than toss out a good thing which we haven’t learnt to do well, perhaps we can learn to do it better?

Today, I asked this question of several persons I cared about — via text — this way:

“How are you? I know it’s not an easy one to answer. So why not give me a one-word response that comes most promptly to mind?”

I got replies.

And — I got asked back!

If you actually know the person some, and have figured out how not to live your life at blur-speed, then variants of this question can be employed:

“How is {something specific} lately?”

“How is your health?”

“How are you with working from home?”

“How are the kids/dog/cat/plants/parents?”

Every bit of connection with another living, breathing being touches Life. It may be in our time where there is so much noise and people engage in shouting matches, this question, softly posed, could be a harbinger of better days.

I go to my journal often and ask myself this Q. After all, the greatest discovery I am responsible for, is the knowledge of myself.

As I rant and ramble, spilling ink on paper, sense and nonsense jostle for space. Me, a convoluted summation of feelings, sensations, thoughts and ideals, pains and regrets, prayers with and without words…

How am I?

I guess it does depend on which part of me you would like to know for each bit is a story of its own.

The stories interlace and sometimes the plot gets stuck. At other times, one story seems to runaway and all I am catching my breath trying to make sense of it. Most times though, the stories make me feel like I am living multiple lives.

So perhaps, my answer depends on whether there’s a dominant story playing and whether I can find the words to explain it to you. Or perhaps, it’s mostly a flimsy answer that says, “I am trying to live my stories out”, and since I am alive, yea, ‘I’m good’ will be an accurate answer.

What about you?

How are you?

(share a one-word answer in the comment, and let’s see the responses)

Newness: it happens when we walk like Jesus

The most amazing endeavour any human can undertake

is to get out of his own skin.

After all, the furthest distance is between two hearts.

This means the most courageous exploration and the grandest discovery is the road of com-passion: to share and come along, in suffering. Indeed, the happiest times the heart, the home, and even the earth has known are times when we reach out to each other and sought to understand and co-operate. But our world is scarred with recurring reminders that pock-mark our humanity - just this past week, the crazy grief as hearts filled with suspicion and rage give vent to its poison gunning down innocent lives.

Cutting through all the rhetoric and press perspectives, the needy question no one can answer in our media remains: what can bridge these hearts?

She told me how she visited her neighbour with dementia and was surprised the old lady could call her by name. the old lady is locked up at home the whole day while her son goes to work. It's a terrible plight; and I asked if God may desire her to reach out in some small way, maybe to bring a meal? I see the reluctance in her eyes. It would be easy to chide someone for being selfish; but aren't we all? And the distance within our divided heart is enough for a heroic conquest.

The church service began and this song came on King of all the earth {listen as you read on}.

Suddenly, i see a picture before me as the song played on. I caught a glimpse of someone's back and felt instinctively that it was the Lord. I the follower, a few steps behind my Lord, watching him from behind. Then it hit me.

Most of us carry about us so much dissatisfaction. There are so many bits of our life we don't like and our constant desire and sometimes prayer is for God to remove or change the circumstances. Sometimes, we reach a spot where we allow that perhaps what needs to change is ourselves. But we often linger there and stay our gaze on our unhappiness. The change doesn't come for a long time or even; never ever comes.

What about Jesus? Does he implore God to remove him from sticky situations, zap his enemies or with a divine sleight of hand re-arrange his circumstances?

We hear him plead in Gethsemane, yes, but in his daily life, there is none of this terror. Everything in the world that he went through is not known to him when he was in Eternal Union with God beyond our time-space. But the Cross is a particular terror of such cosmic proportions; Gethsemane is beyond our comprehension. I refuse to claim it as a picture of our need to surrender.

Let's face it. we have hoped for that boss to disappear, that colleague to flop, that friend to quietly un-friend us so we can breathe again... Yes, include all the venomous, murderous thoughts while we are at it.

Those are the thoughts Jesus won't entertain because it is not in His being to go in that direction.

I know. I used to protest too: he is God after all! Yes he is, but we are "partakers of the divine nature" Peter reminds us. {see 2 Peter 1v4}

Peter's fellow apostle puts it across in a different way in his letter called 1 John. He made it pretty clear: it is one way or the other. Either you are following Christ, trusting Him for your salvation, and one of His... in which case, you are to "walk as Jesus did" {see 1 John 2v6}.

I thought back to what I saw while the song played. His back was a little bent, as he is trying to fit into a smallish space; as if he sees something, or someone, and wants to reach it.

I hate bending myself to adjust, adapt and risk pulling a muscle or two. I'd like to avoid those uncomfortable spaces, those unlovely people who make me feel like they are draining the living lights out of me.

But Jesus is going to

Encounter
Enter
Engage

He is going to

Throw light
Touch
Transform

and this is precisely how Newness works.
We follow the Newness Bringer - he who has wrestled with the worst of darkness, been held hostage by death, and triumphed over all of it. And now, through His Spirit working in us, He is seeking to spread Newness for and through us -- as we walk as He walks.

I just returned from a gathering of national pastors.One of the best pieces of news I heard is that some young people in Singapore have found out that those garbage cleaners, mostly from Bangladesh, save on their finances by living in the dumps, sleeping next to the rodents who recently grabbed the headlines. These young people have started visiting and befriending these workers. This is Newness in a sleek city of good looks, organised days and clean streets!


Martin Dugand* found seven traits in all good explorers who actually carve out new trails and solve mysteries: 

Curiosity, 
courage, 
passion, 
independence, 
perseverance, 
hope and 
self-discipline

What a new way to think of our Lord, the Explorer! We too are now explorers because a whole new territory has opened up for us.

Go on, look hard. If you see Jesus walk right ahead of you, walk right into that scary, disconcerting, stressful, uptight and inconvenient situation. he will even slow his step and take your hand.


*The Explorers, the book

ouch!

it's easy to read and think about injustice, oppression, poverty, gender inequality...and then to start imagining that compassion is forming and i am becoming a better person.
so here comes the test.

venue: swimming pool
i gingerly dipped myself into the 1.2 metre pool, intending to just do a few breaths before i run out of breath...naturally i looked around the pool.
one end, a few rowdy kids. the other end, five women.two filipino and the other three were being assisted by them. one of the women clambered up the side and sat there. she noticed the scabs on her leg and started picking on them and rinsing them out into the pool.
okay! that was major uncomfortable for me. i did not come to swim in such waters. i felt my frustration rising. i had come already. it'd be foolish to just leave. But she was clearly intellectually challenged; so i cannot quite talk to her...finally, i walked over and surprised myself that i managed to calmly say to one of the filipino ladies, "please tell her to wash her wounds in the toilet, not here", and i turned and went back to my spot. i was still rather rattled and felt badly.

What would you have done if anything? would it have mattered to you? perhaps i am rather fastidious huh?

i believe that a more compassionate way was to go up and befriend these ladies. then i can speak out of a place of connection. but i let my irked self rule me and i may have lost an opportunity to bring some cheer to myself! after all, the two filipino helpers did not seem too enthusiastic about what they were doing.