How Are You?

How are you?
It seems like a well-meant question. It should show that the person asking has a level of caring at what the person in question feels. Though I've realized that our responses are extremely automatic. I saw a friend today that I don't see very often, and she asked me. "Oh, hi! How are you?" And I was about to go with the standard, "good," or the educated reply, "well," but I realized that even though that's what my friend probably expected, I didn't feel well. I didn't feel bad, either. Just mediocre. I went to school for the first day in a week, and I felt accordingly a bit down. So I merely shrugged and said, "I'm okay."

And she took a double take. I'm not sure if she realized it, but she looked at me differently for a moment. Though then she said, "Yeah, I'm tired." And I thought about it- if you're not feeling 100% yourself, then why should you expect a "good" from someone else?
So in a way, "how are you" is a rhetorical question, yet an automatic response is expected ... there should be a word for that kind of thing.


-Cora