changing my attitude toward 'hi'
icon: "exuviate (photo of a dragonfly with shimmery green wings after its last metamorphosis, standing next to its previous exoskeleton)"
After posting that I hate it when people use greetings like 'hi' and reading the responses, I realized 1) other people don't hate this, 2) other ADD people in fact feel a particular need for this, and 3) the reason I hate this is because it makes me feel forced to participate in something meaningless on fear of being punished, because I was not allowed to ignore people as a child. I can fix this by assigning meaning to my greetings and practicing ignoring whatever I do not want to respond to.
I honestly thought that most people didn't care one way or the other and people who reject norms would also hate it as meaningless and useless. I thought I was being kind by not making other people do this! So it's a good thing I posted about it because I have been unintentionally making people feel off-kilter or unimportant for decades *concerned frown*
So I'm going to do my best to change my behavior. I thought about how to make the ritual meaningful for me and decided that when I say 'hi' I mean H.I. which stands for hierarchy incinerate, a wish for all hierarchy to be burned into nothingness. And I will picture sending them a gift of flame, which they will hopefully use to destroy oppression but they can also just use for any positive purpose. If they say hi-how-are-you in a situation where it is not appropriate (such as walking by each other in a hall), I will ignore the question and respond with 'hi.' If they ask how I am when I can actually respond, I will offer them a summary phrase and one fact that has affected how I am lately - whether they want to hear it or not. It is disrespectful to ask someone a question and not care about the answer, and I'm going to assume people are not being disrespectful.
When I was forced to participate in this ritual as a cashier, I asked, 'how's your life?' because it was different enough that it shook people out of their rut sometimes and they gave a real answer. Plenty of people just said 'fine' though, so I am going to try 'how's your day been?' For me it is much easier to answer than 'how are you?' which is a damn huge question.
I hate the question "how are you?" because I'm usually the kind of person that answers honestly. I don't do well with people who think that yes means no and no means yes, so usually people are like "but I didn't really mean to know you were doing bad", well then why did you ask? :P
Badass!
I didn't get as far as commenting on the original so I'll share thoughts now. I don't mind people saying "Hi" as a conversation starter in person but online often I have not been that impressed when someone sent a message to contact me, say on a dating page and all they would say is "Hi" as I expected a deeper introduction. Your post reinforced my view that I should delve deeper and see what someone has to say beyond "hi" once a conversation is kick started. It's the same in a way on LJ when people add without speaking. I often would dislike this and ignore random adds without intros but as well experience has shown sometimes friendship can work out somewhat as it's just another way to say "hi". And if I/we accept "hi" as being just an opener, we are opening ourselves further to potential good friends just as much as *some* who might present a good intro dialogue, might turn out to be not so great. As mentioned though, I don't really enjoy small talk in itself though like people saying "How are you?" and not caring about the reply or even worse, see it a negative thing if you answer truthfully as I think if you don't want honesty, don't pretend or ask to begin with.
I don't like it when cashiers do it though, because they don't know me, and because it's hard to focus on both buying my groceries and participating in small talk. Fortunately in the UK, it's not so common - I found it very uncomfortable when I was in Canada.
http://ideas.ted.com/what-a-difference-a-word-can-make-how-a-single-word-can-change-your-conversation/?utm_campaign=social&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_content=ideas-blog&utm_term=social-science