What to Ask Instead of ‘How Are You?’ During a Pandemic
Everyone’s doing badly. We need better questions to ask.
Every conversation I have these days with someone who doesn’t live in my home—every FaceTime with a friend or family member, every reporting phone call—kicks off with a brief, awkward, accidental meditation on mortality. “Hi!” I say. “Hi!” the other person says back. “How are you?” I ask next, out of habit. And then we both spend a long moment gazing directly into the abyss.
How are we? People are sick and dying in alarming numbers all around us. Maybe we’re lucky enough not to be sick or dying, but any of us could be soon. Everyone we know is in danger. Our jobs, and really our entire financial futures, are in jeopardy. Are we really going to paper over these grim truths with the usual, compulsorily breezy “I’m good! You?”
The innocuous
