Three little words
If I said to you there are three little words that have the power to make someone’s day, I’m guessing you’ll imagine the words in question are “I love you.”
But those are not the three words I want to talk about in this blog.
These three words are ones you can say to a complete stranger or someone you know intimately. They can help lift someone’s mood, make them feel acknowledged, start a conversation, show them you care. They can be said casually, kindly, considerately and/or lovingly. They can be powerfully compassionate or gently inquiring. Unexpectedly interested or reassuringly attentive.
The three little words that have the power to do all this, and more, are:
How are you?
Whilst they’re almost always amongst the first words I say to my mum when I speak to her every morning, and the way I greet my little grandgirls when they facetime me over breakfast (or rather, a version of them that goes “how is everyone today?” if I’m going to be strictly accurate. To which the answer is invariably “GOOD!” yelled at top volume). And whilst they feature in most of the conversations I have with other family members, friends and colleagues, that’s not the context I want to consider them in here (honestly, this won’t be as dry as that makes it sound).
Because the situation I want to talk about using them in, is when you say them to a complete stranger. Most particularly a stranger who you’re interacting with over a transaction of some kind - in a shop or a supermarket, at a station or a bank, a cafe or a restaurant.
These are the kinds of encounters we can have several times a day, and which take no more than a few moments. The sorts of fleeting meetings that, with the busyness and distractions of our daily lives, can literally pass us by with us barely noticing them, or the person on the other side of them.
Typically they might involve some limited dialogue, and the person doing the serving may well ask you how you are, but when you return or initiate that enquiry, something really rather lovely happens. Instead of just being a routine transaction, the interaction turns into a conversation. The person on the receiving end of your “how are you?” feels acknowledged and recognised in way that is both impactful and often surprising.
I say this, not in some vague theoretical way, but from practical, near-daily experience. Because for the past couple of years, I’ve been very deliberately asking everyone I have one of those transactional encounters with how they are. Their responses range from the briefly polite (fine thank you) to the warmly delighted (I’m alright, thank you for asking) with the vast majority leaning towards enthusiastic rather than indifferent.
In every case there is at least a flicker, and far more often a more sustained moment, of pleasure, and a noticeable dialling up of the warmth level of our encounter. An acknowledgement of contact between two people and a recognition of that, albeit momentary, connection.
Of course it helps if the “how are you?” is said with eye contact and a smile, rather than lightly tossed in the other person’s general direction. I guarantee you’ll be rewarded with a responsive smile of equal, if not more, pleasure.
During lockdown we all learnt how much human interactions matter and how much we miss them when we’re deprived of them. Remember how exponentially more delighted you were to see the online shopping delivery driver, the person bringing you your takeaway, or simply waving from the door at the bin men (just me? Ah….) when those were the only, even vaguely close up, human encounters you had in a day?
We all rushed to be able to hug our loved ones as soon as we could, and I know I still feel a little surge of gratitude each time I’m able to do that even now. Three little words are a small but significant way to show we still value and care about those stranger encounters. And that we aren’t mindless of the person on the other side of them. Indeed, that we’re engaged enough with them to ask
“How are you?”
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