It is Well
The howareyou?goodyourself?fine exchange has often bothered me.
We'd already exchanged formalities, but as he left, he half-turned back to say "Are you well?" his voice lifted at the end in statement of a question.
Several words caught at my throat.
He'd asked the right question.
"With my soul" I replied.
At last, it is the right answer.
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p.s.
This quote is is in my advisor's room, written in calligraphy, as a poster for a outdoors guide who was a math student years ago. He did the calligraphy himself:
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than Death or Night;
To defy Power, which seems Omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope, till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change nor falter nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan! is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life; Joy, Empire, and Victory!
Promethius Unbound
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
howareyou?goodyourself?fine exchange has bothered me for a long time, knowing that the other party neither cares too much to bother for a longer conversation nor wants to pass by not noticing you. That is why I have stopped really saying hi to people…which is not really a healthy solution to things but does at least remove you from the trouble of having to go through the painfully awkward exchange of meaningless words.
who are you?
and I mean that in the most inviting of ways
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