Living The Dream

               I have changed my standard “How are you?” response.

           For most people it’s “Fine (or “Good”).  How are you?” which always seemed to me to deflect rather than convey information.  Not that the question really wants an answer, but it is a conventional fill in for pleasantries.  Very formulaic.

           Some years ago I noted that a friend and business associate used to respond “Great!”, and it much suited his optimistic, irrepressible personality.  He is well known as a brilliant salesman financial whiz-now-not-so-much-a-kid, but the “Great!” was infectious, and I adopted it some time in the '80’s.  It’s unusual enough to be rather a trademark, and people who phone me have come to expect it.

           What is truly bizarre is the self-fulfilling part.  Somehow putting on the façade of cheerful optimism does a decent job in creating the real thing.  I don’t know how that works, but if I tell 10 people a day “Great” then I get to believe it.  How does that work?

           Recently I’ve decided to up the ante.  After many years I’m no longer “Great” to phone calls.  Now I’m “Living the Dream”.  In the middle of a typical day at the office it goes like this:

           “Hello, it’s Bob.  How are you?

           “Living the Dream!”

           (silence or guffaw)

           Or, “Well you must know something no one else does”

           I expect most people think the humor is in the contrast between the mundane, or the conflict they call about or the eternal march of paper from the inbox to the outbox,  and “Living the Dream”.  Some people assume it must be sarcastic, but it’s not that simple.  As far as I can tell it is two things – first is positive reinforcement internalized, the odd way in which saying it makes it so, it really lifts me up and makes me feel more optimistic than comes naturally, and second is a thought that harkens back a couple of years http://contrariat.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html  so that perhaps I really am Living the Dream.  Might as well think so.