In the early autumn, over pizza and wine, I had a conversation with a dear friend. He’s Turkish. We were in Ayvalık, a small town on Turkey’s Aegean coast, talking about cultural imprints, when he suddenly paused and looked at me. “You know what?” he said. “Whenever I ask you how you are, you never really answer. You go into a meta space immediately – talking about politics or about bigger things that worry you – but you never say how you actually are.”
I’ve been thinking about his observation ever since, debating in my mind whether it was true – and I’ve recently reached the conclusion that, unfortunately, he was right.
As much as I like to be perceived as an easygoing person, the question “How are you?” stresses me out immensely. I freeze when asked and wish we could just skip it. I’d be ashamed to dive into a deep analysis of my being – which, secretly, is exactly what I’d love to do. But that might be overwhelming for the other person and impolite – not to say unfair to burden them with my inner troubles. (I wasn’t raised by needs-oriented parents. I was taught to squeeze my butt cheeks, keep going, stay rational, and see things for what they are: grim and hard.)
The good part: I’m under no illusions that I’m the only one like this. My odd relationship to the question, I suspect, is a German cultural phenomenon. As much as I despise generalisations and vague collective “we” talk – this is a we matter.
In most countries that I am familiar with – say, Turkey or the UK – people greet each other with a polite: “Hello, how are you?” No one expects much of an answer, just a friendly, harmless: “I’m fine, how are you?” It’s more of a social lubricant or a ritual than a real request for information. But in Germany, “How are you?” is anything but simple. It’s a sort of trick question. “I’m fine” is considered otherworldly, naive, shallow, delulu – and, most of all, dishonest. Who is fine, really? We feel compelled to answer truthfully while simultaneously debating how much to reveal and how honest to be without losing face.
A typical exchange therefore sounds something like this:
“How are you?”
“Ach. I’m OK …” (pause) “Well …” (sigh) “Actually … did you see what’s happening in the news?”
We digress, we stumble, we mumble. Why?
Here’s my theory: we have a profound aversion to letting ourselves appear vulnerable, and a suspicion of superficiality. We can’t say something just for the sake of good vibes. Everything must be serious.
Some might say that this obsession with depth is a good thing: no fake smiles, no empty politeness – and above all, precision. The German language has the ability to capture entire inner worlds in a single word. Who else has Weltschmerz (a sorrow or melancholy about the state of the world), or Geborgenheit (the feeling of safety and warmth)? But do those words really serve as a display of emotional range – or do they function more like fortresses to hide behind, protecting us from actually showing how we feel?
The friend I had pizza with in Ayvalık reminded me of that too. What’s the point of having all these beautiful words if you don’t feel them? To feel and to have, as he pointed out with a straight face, are two very different things.
Over the years, as a journalist, I have interviewed many female authors and artists who grew up in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. Many told me that, in their childhood, “How are you?” was an absent question – no one ever asked it. I think our issue with it is an intergenerational inheritance. It is tied to the devastations of the first half of the 20th century, and to what is often called German angst – that collective tendency toward anxiety, pessimism and overcaution. It carries echoes of shame and postwar guilt, and it keeps us from opening up, from taking risks, and – most tellingly – from speaking up when it matters.
The irony is that we love to talk publicly about Vergangenheitsbewältigung – the official policy of “coming to terms with the past”. But what we rarely discuss is how that cruel history of Nazi Germany’s crimes and the two world wars has shaped us emotionally to this day. So, in a way, it’s not surprising that I – that we – can’t answer “How are you?” properly. We have issues.
The author Heike Geißler, in her recent essay Arbeiten (To Work), also reflects on this loaded question. “The sense of overwhelm I sometimes feel when trying to answer that question – and realising: I don’t know. I don’t even want to know. I’d rather not say. What was once dismissed as a banal question is now burdened with a different accusation: it is impossible to answer – no one can answer it. Responding to it has become an act of effort, a declaration of stance, a confession of being for or against something.”
It’s a sad status quo. Because our reluctance around the question means we’re perceived to be cold, restrained, always slightly detached. We continue to miss out on those easy, warm, everyday exchanges with others. And those small, ordinary niceties matter. That’s what you sense first about an encounter: not depth, but atmosphere – how a brief interaction with someone makes you feel.
My hope therefore lies with the younger generations – those who, thanks to Germany’s still somewhat intact healthcare system, have access to therapy and actually use it. They’re good at expressing themselves freely and at ridiculing the old idea of squeezing one’s butt cheeks and carrying on no matter what.
They can’t say “I’m fine” either, but they say everything else – their feelings, worries, self-analyses. From my millennial perspective, that seems a much healthier and more truthful approach. As we reconnect with friends over Christmas and New Year perhaps we should also let our guard down, and admit the flaws we’ve spent generations trying to hide. What’s the worst that could happen?
Carolin Würfel is a writer, screenwriter and journalist who lives in Berlin and Istanbul. She is the author of Three Women Dreamed of Socialism
