Are you happy?

As most people do, I went through a phase in college. It was not short lived, like most phases, but it did die out after some time. The reason for its demise is what I intend to center this blog entry around, but I must first introduce this purposefully mysterious phase.

I realized during my first year of college how empty greetings can be. “What’s up?” is such a hollow question, as is “How is it going?”. Questions like this are more a “hello” than a question of “How is life”. I noticed, as I had been noticing for some time, that most people who ask these questions tune out directly following them. It is as if the answer does not matter. I tested my theory often, answering to peoples, “How is it going?” with a “not too good”. The response was often, “yea man” or “good stuff”. I might as well have told them I had just stabbed my dog with an icicle which melted, thus eliminating all evidence of my evil deed. “Good stuff, man”.

Equally as empty is often the response. Some people ask the question with a true interest and concern to how things really are going, yet most replies are automatic. I’m sure you know what I mean. Someone says, “How’s it going?” and the other responds, “Can’t complain” or “good” without even thinking. They could have just been bitch-slapped by a parakeet and still respond, “Can’t complain”. Having thought about this, I deduced that a new question was in order. Something that showed a genuine interest in how the person was doing while also not giving them an easy out or automatic response.

Thus, I started asking people, “Are you happy?”

This question often caught people off-guard, which was exactly my intention. It caused them to think about their day or recent occurrences, and to respond with a genuine answer. If something bad had happened in their day that they had tried to repress, they were forced to recall their day and set occurrence and actually evaluate how it had affected them. They were basically forced to evaluate how their day had influenced them.

The issue lies therein: forcing someone to recount things that they may not necessarily want to think about. Humans are naturally repressive. We often chose not to deal with something, and to pretend everything is alright. Naturally, our response to “how is it going?” is “good” because we would like to think everything is good and there is no reason for it not to be. So when someone with this mindset is forced to recall repressed feelings, they may not like the following discussion.

Like Communism, my question was a good concept in theory. But as the theory Communism does not take into account the natural human desire for power, my theory of “Are you happy?” does not take into account the natural human desire to pretend that everything is ok.

I tried for two years to utilize this question among friends. You couldn’t ask someone you just met, “Are you happy?” as they would probably wonder, sad fact as it is, what planet you are from. But my friends developed an automatic response to this. They anticipated it, as I tried to use it in every discussion, and I eventually conceded defeat.

I realize now that in my haste to create a more open and probing question, I was forcing others to divulge information they would rather repress while also using it so often that it was no longer a surprise. I have, since that time, revised my tactic so that I use the question sparingly with friends who I have no spoken to in a while, or those who sound like they are thinking of something sad. The latter is a perfect situation, as it is obvious they are not repressing the situation and are almost hopeful to have someone pull the occurrence out of repression and into the open.

Humans go through their day, too often, without internalizing its events. They hide their feelings in belief that there is no solution and thus no reason to talk about it. We all have more friends than we realize. Though we may only turn to 2 or 3 friends for help, there are more shoulders to lean on than we give credit to. We must sometimes try to put ourselves out there for people who do not expect our shoulder, and in turn they will extend their own.