How are you?

If you read 'what do you do?' you knew this was coming. 

It's one of the most asked questions through out the day, most answered as well. It also is the most meaningful and personal question that has become nothing but a formality in today's world.

We ask it to the person walking by, the person helping us at a counter in any store, our co-workers, our friends, family, anyone and everyone. And yet over 90% of the time the answer is 'I'm good', 'fine' or something meaningless like that. When the honest truth of it is, most of us in that moment are not fine or good. There is something meaningless bothering us, that slowly becomes meaningful after answering that question because you all of a sudden realize, true or not, that no one out there in the world really cares about you. 

Be a child. Put someone else before you .

Now I've asked this question a lot, and answered as well. In asking, its accompanied by a smile (if you know me, I'm almost always smiling anyway) and instead of a 'How are you?' it's a genuine -I wanna know toned- "How's your day going?', "Busy day today?", or other things like that. I ask it before the other person does so when they ask me, its almost always actually genuine. 

And when the other person does ask me first, if it's not asked in a way that I know you care, or sometimes just for fun, or it seems to have become a routine; I'll stump you with a follow up question of: "Do you really wanna know? Or our you just asking for politeness's sake?" Now that usually, will make their little inquiry sincere, although sometimes it takes them more then a few seconds to get over the tiny shock, that I seriously just questioned their unmeant, unacknowledged shallowness. 

Words carry weight people. And they should. There was a time when giving your word meant more then making a promise. Rare as it may be, those people whose word carry that weight are still around. Progress is only progress if it makes the world a better place. Not simply an easier, lazier one. If one can't even be bothered to articulate enough to say what they mean, how is one to take care of one-self. And if we contribute into creating a world without meaning, when tomorrow, no-one is there for us, we've got no one to blame but ourselves.