the language of listening

kya haal hai? Kayf haal-ik? Haal-e shomaa chetoreh?

One of the most difficult, sometimes even dreaded questions for me to answer authentically is the simple greeting “How are you.” We ask the question daily, usually knowing that there is a social script for how it goes.

In a work setting, it usually goes like this

“I’m good, how are you”

“Good!”

There may be some random little fact thrown about how the weather is, or about something someone did over the weekend, but then the conversation quickly transitions into whatever it is that we need to talk about for the day.

At a grocery store, the cash register asks me “Hi, how are you”.

I say “Good, how are you.” They respond “Good, thanks for asking.”

The conversation ends.

In some instances, these conversation scripts exist even amongst people who are somewhat closer, an acquaintance, running into an old friend. They may expand a bit to include something along the lines of “I’ve been busy” or “you know, just working…”

When we ask people how they are doing, it’s almost like we are expecting the response to be superficial, or, at best, to be a one-liner about the work they’ve been up to, the tasks on their to-do list, and what they’ve been busy with.

I wonder if our interactions with people would be better if we answered this question properly.

When I was 19 years old, I interned at a local non-profit in the city. I worked from the same room as all the other undergrad and graduate interns, and we would sometimes meet with some of our other colleagues, the “adult adults” in my eyes at that time, who were supposedly our mentors. One day, as I was having lunch with my co-workers, I saw my colleague pass by our room. I called her name to say hello, and she looked excited to see us. Seeing that she seemed to be in a rush, I wasn’t expecting us to have any sort of conversation. I asked her how she was doing, and, to my surprise, she stopped in her tracks and I watched her entire demeanor fall.

“Honestly, not good. I’ve barely been sleeping this week, I have a lot going on outside of work, and I have more things to do than I can handle before the end of the day.” She continued.

I was genuinely shocked. That was the first time I asked someone how they were doing in a work setting and they actually answered my question.

Whenever I try to be more honest with people about something I may be struggling with, I usually notice myself ending it off with some version of “but you know, that’s life. how are you!” or a "but its ok… anyways….”

Whatever it is, it’s some version of trying to wrap things up, because it is too uncomfortable to be truly vulnerable, to have thoughts unfinished that I say out loud, and to just let them be.

I ended up having a great conversation with her and with the other interns in the room, a very honest conversation, and I walked away feeling like I genuinely connected with her in a way that I had never connected with anyone at work who wasn’t necessarily “my friend”, but instead, supposed to be a mentor. It was the first time I heard someone in the ‘upper leadership’ share with me their critiques about the internal environment at a non-profit, the contradictions of supposedly doing work that is meant to help others while your employees are unhappy and overworked, and how she was being affected.

It seems like something so minor, but I was so impressed at her honesty- the fact that she didn’t try to hide how she was doing, and the fact that she didn’t try to just use a basic one-liner and get back to her work. That entire interaction made me rethink how to answer the question “How are you.”

In recent years, I’ve tried to be more aware of this, and try to actually answer the question “how are you” when it comes up in my conversations, in an attempt to be more genuine.

“How have you been???”

“I’ve been okay, you know, ups and downs, how about yourself?”

A little more accurate, but still, we all carry these vague one-liners with us, not really knowing how much is appropriate to talk about.

Even with my family, our family friends, and close to distant relatives, it doesn’t change too much.

“Aap ka haal kya hai?

“Alhamdulillah.” Praise be to God.

The conversation transitions. It is almost like the question is no longer meant to hear an answer, it is more of an acknowledgment of someone’s existence.

Theologically, it is a beautiful thing— to praise God no matter what state I am in, to recite this over and over regardless of how I am feeling.

In conversation, however, it is also just much easier for me to respond with one short word, a complete sentence at that,— then it is for me to reply “good.” Alhamdulillah, I can’t complain. (but sometimes, honestly, I could).

What exactly am I even supposed to say to someone when I already anticipate that they’re only asking this question out of courtesy? Is it time that we re-think the way we greet one another entirely?

I don’t really know how realistic it is for us to answer this question with genuineness all the time. With the rise of therapy speak dominating a lot of our popular discourse, I also do wonder from time to time that if I answer the question authentically and it isn’t always a positive answer that it will be seen as trauma-dumping.

Of course, it depends on the interaction. I’m not likely to start opening up about my life story to the cash register bagging my groceries when they ask how my day is, but I wouldn’t necessarily mind knowing more about how someone’s day truly is going. I’m not expecting people at work to overshare what they aren’t comfortable sharing with, but I also wouldn’t mind getting to know someone beyond just the titles we carry and the tasks we have yet to do. All around us, we have opportunities to connect with people in so many different capacities, and it’s almost like we are denying these opportunities every time we are presented with them.

Last year, a friend I had reconnected with after graduating and I were catching up at a holiday market in our hometown. After catching up a bit she asked me if I was happy. Looking back on it, I think it might have been the first time someone has asked me that question ever. What a simple question it is. I ask myself if we have lost the language of curiosity. Do we create time and space to be curious at all anymore? I know this simple skill is affecting our relationships, it is affecting our interactions with one another. I know all of us are longing for real community. I know we all wish to leave our interactions with one another feeling more seen, more heard, more acknowledged for who we are.

In Urdu, one of the most common ways to greet someone is by asking someone "kya haal hai"-- a way to ask someone how are you, what is going on? But the word "haal" actually holds a deeper meaning than we usually treat it. And, the term haal is not just limited to Urdu, it is also used in Arabic and Farsi when people greet one another. In Arabic, kayf haal-ik? Or, in Farsi, haal-e shomaa chetoreh?

The term haal literally translates to the state of one's heart. In reality, in either of these languages, we are routinely asking people "What is the state of your heart right now? How is your heart doing? In the Western world, while the brain and intellect are seen as the pinnacle of reason and logic, in our Eastern tradition, and more specifically, in traditional Muslim societies, the heart is treated as the center of the human. We answer with our hearts, and the answers we are looking for lay in our hearts.

When I ask someone how they are doing, that is what I wish we could truly answer. When someone asks me how I am doing, that is what I truly wish I could answer.

I wonder if the reason we may struggle to answer this question, a question most of us hear almost on daily as a means to connect, is because we don't even truly know the answer to our state of heart ourselves.

In her text, The Tao of Islam, author Sachiko Murata writes “the Quran pictures the heart as the locus of that which makes a human being human, the center of the human personality. This meeting has both a cognitive and a moral dimension.”

While we thrive off of a post-modern Descartes dictum in the West that centers human consciousness-- an underlying, unquestioned manifestation of the belief “I think, therefore I am”, Islamic societies centered the consciousness of the spiritual heart (qalb). The heart, seen as a spiritual organ is central to existence and the human being’s relationship with God. It was not only understood as the seat of intelligence and the center of a person's being but also as the vessel encompassing our emotions and moral character.

I think about how much emphasis our poetry, our literature, and our art have always placed on the heart. I think about how deeply this focus exists within our theological and spiritual texts, how we pray to God to open our hearts (Quran 20:25-29) when we are overburdened or feeling low, how we pray for our hearts to never harden nor turn numb to injustices in the world.

Even if someone does not believe in theology, there is no denying the importance that the heart has in our understanding of emotion.

Linguistically, then, when we ask “kya haal hai”, we know that we are asking a question that requires a certain level of reflection to answer more properly.

In our culture of urgency, we are denying ourselves the opportunity to reflect on the state of our heart—quite literally the most important organ in our body—day by day. We are denying each other the opportunity to share the state of our hearts with each and every faux greeting we extend to one another.

I don’t have any crazy proposals or solutions. All I know is that we are all starved for more human connection. Somewhere along the way, it became too weird to say anything other than “I’m good, how are you,”

We all want to live more meaningfully. We all want to connect with one another in ways that surpass the superficial and truly feel more human.

I want to know how my friends are truly doing. And I want to be able to share with people how I am truly doing.

And I also wouldn’t mind having more random friendly interactions with strangers at the grocery store.