Beyond Tokenism: the abolition of "How are you?" as a question of greeting

(What a great essay title!! =)

Before I start my tirade on tokenism, can I just say that I'll never understand the 'greeting kiss' and people who give them. I was thinking of starting a social experiment at church where I become one of those people that gives greeting kisses. I think the reactions would be funny! Hehehheehe. (Needless to say that's not a thought I'm about to implement any time soon, because I am not a greeting kiss person! =p)

Ok. To the matter at hand!

If you think about it, the question "How are you?" is such a loaded question! Why do we ask it by way of greeting!? Or even when someone really wants to know how you are....it's still a really loaded question.

I've had two kinda recent run-ins with this. Firstly, I got an email from one of my sister's old friends which said "Hi Em, how are you? Love [insert name]". That was more than a month ago, and I still haven't answered because I don't know what to say. On one hand I could give the token response, being "Oh, ok, getting to the busy end of the semester at uni." (That's my way of being token, but sounding like it's a thought out non-token response.) On the other hand, I could actually say how I am....but that poses 2 problems. Firstly, you need a certain degree of familiarity to be able to ellicit an honest response...and for this friend and I, I suppose we have that, though by my uncertain tone, you'd definitely think twice about it. Secondly, there is just SO MUCH that has gone on in between the time we last spoke that I don't know what to update her on. And stuff that gets me excited (e.g. my new saxophone- and yes, the gloss is starting to wear off, but I have to play every day so my embochure strengthens and I can play more in tune! Argh!) seems really trivial to other people for some reason (Not that I get why...I mean...why wouldn't you think me getting an instrument that I can't really play would be exciting for goodness' sake!)

The other experience I had (on Friday night as it happened) was when someone asked the "How are you" with the expectation that I would spill my soul, which I was definitely not prepared to do. (How did I figure out that this expectation existed? He asked: "How are you?" to which I said "O, not too bad...", then he said "No really, how are you?" to which I replied [and luckily I had my non-token-sounding response up my sleeve!] "Oh, ok. Uni is getting really really busy at the moment.") There are just some people I'm not prepared to go there with...not because I have some aversion to them or anything. I just don't know them!

Hence, in view of these complexities as outlined above, I propose that we stop saying "How are you?" by way of greeting in favour of something less loaded like..."[insert adjective] weather we're having today, huh!"