The Greeter

Everyday, I wake up and practice the same routein. I find about a hundred different people and ask them, “Hey, how are you?”

The answer is always, “Good, you?”

And I always reply with, “Good.”

Then we nod to each other, coming to a mutual understanding that we don’t really want to have a conversation, and we walk away.

Everyday I repeat the exact same words over, and over, and over. I’ve said them so many times, they’ve stopped meaning anything. They’ve become more of a statement than an actual greeting. More of an acknowledgment of one’s existence.

It’s become a habit to just say, “good.” A reflex, my natural instinct. It doesn’t matter if it’s a lie or not, it’s just what you say. It’s what everyone says. Just small talk, meandering around the point.

The words “how are you” have become stale, and lost all meaning. No one really expects a serious response, we just say it out of respect.

It’s become a lost phrase, corrupted by casualness. And there are no other words to ask the same thing. To ask, when you really mean it. Because no matter how sincerely you say it, the immediate answer will always be, “good.”

This way, the tears and broken hearts can hide behind automatic responces. The “I’m good”‘s can mask the “I’m in pain”‘s and the “I’m fine”‘s can shelter the “I’m dying”‘s.

By trying to be friendly to everyone, we’ve dug the people who really need it into a deeper hole.

But still,

everyday, I wake up and practice the same routein. I find about a hundred different people and ask them, “Hey, how are you?”

With tears in their eyes, the answer is always, “Good, you?”

I always reply with, “Good” and force a fake smile.

Then we nod to each other, coming to a mutual understanding that we don’t really want to have a conversation, and we walk away, screaming inside.