“HiHowareyou,” a girl says as she breezes past with a polite smile. She is gripping her binder anxiously, and her triple shot latte makes me think she is scrambling to stay afloat academically. Her 100 watt smile stuns me into equal cordiality, but she is ten feet past me by the time, “Fine. How are you?” finds its way out of my mouth. I shrug my shoulders and walk to class. I have my mind on my own worries, homework propagates exponentially, money disappears rapidly, and I cannot seem to correctly balance a social life with what I’m paying to do here — that is, academics.
As I sit down, unprepared and discouraged, I can only think about how much I covet the time management skills of the student two seats to my right. I am sure his life is brimming with fun. After all, he finished today’s reading a week and a half ago. The girl next to me is cheery, “Hi Jenna, how are you?” The string of stresses parade back through my head, “I’m all right,” I say and return to pre-class prep. I put my books and pencils on my desk. “Why just all right? What’s up?” I look back up at her, slightly startled by the question. Oh, she wants to know how I am.
Sometimes we miss the fact that the people around us – faculty, food service, bookstore personnel, registrar staff, students, friends, coworkers, neighbors, peers – are all real people with real lives. Sometimes the fact that the barista has to ask us four times what our order is inclines us to be snide or complain about how ridiculous or brainless she was. I will admit that I am just as guilty of forgetting that I am interacting with people.
It is so much easier to be angry with the individuals at the complex Registrar than it is to give those staff members the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are each doing their job to the best of their ability. It would be easier to roll my eyes when the Café server puts a healthy scoop of something I did not want on my plate. It would also be easier to join the negative but true commentary about my professor as she recites the book chapter we were assigned to read the night before.
There is an appropriateness to the polite “How are you?” It is common manners. However, because of its profuse use, often people forget that it indicates, “I care about you and your life.” Once one removes that connotation, he will find that he has forgotten the very foundation of the question. In other words, because one has removed the implicit meaning of the question, the fact that there is a “you” and a “your life” to care about quickly evaporates from one’s mind. Yet that is the purpose of the question. It is so easy to forget that these people around us are people, and they have academic, personal, and financial struggles too.
One person’s influence in the world is much greater than their take on the day’s events. So smile, sincerely respect and care about the people around you, even if they do not seem to deserve it, because they are beloved creations of God facing the trials of life just like you.
