How you doin?

I'm sure that most people who have been at least a little aware of pop-culture over the last decade recognize the phrase in the title. It is the catch-phrase of Joey from the once popular sit-com Friends. The show turned what was once a common greeting into a "pick-up" line, a come-on. A line of dialogue used in flirtation. I find this line, and the way it's meaning has transformed, to be quite illuminating.

Used in flirtation - usually with at least an attempt at Joey's Brooklyn accent - it implies explicit approval of the person it is directed at. As if it was a rhetorical question. The line is less of an enquiry into "how are you doing?" - but more of a statement, or better yet a declaration, that you are indeed "doing" fine. The real meaning of this "line" is "I find you very attractive, and I just wanted you to know." Primarily in the hopes that you feel the same about me, and secondary (for those who are less self-centered) to hopefully make you feel better knowing that someone approves of you (or at least your appearance).

But what about the original question? How can I answer it? What is meant by "how am I doing?" What do I mean when I say "i am doing fine"? What is the difference between "doing good" and just "being good"? In my experience, this question is usually just a ritualized greeting. At most the question is a shortened form of "how are you feeling?"

I believe that when I (truthfully) answer "I am good" I am not being literal in my answer. I think that (like most people - I believe) I rarely actually believe that I (myself) am truly good. There is always, somewhere deep inside, the fear that I am actually bad, not good. This is a worry I often suffer from. A curse I often find myself afflicted with. At these times I must remind myself that worrying is "praying for the worst". And that falling prey to negative beliefs about myself is to curse myself. So, at those moments when I say I am "good", it is not so much my feelings of acceptance towards who I am, but my ability to be comfortable with what I have recently done.

It is so much easier to identify with what I have done than with who I am. I think that this is because it is so much easier to know (or at least have a rough but semi-accurate idea of) just what it is I have done. And if for some reason I am not sure, getting reasonably accurate answers from others is possible. Knowing just who I am, or getting a good answer from someone else, is not so easy. Nobody else can tell me who I am.

When I say "I am good", what I am really saying, at best, is that I am feeling good about myself because I am mostly proud of my recent actions and haven't really done anything to be ashamed of - recently. Or I could be lying because I don't feel like sharing my shameful behaviour.

Really though, I do know that I am good. It is just not always easy to remember, especially after those moments when my decision-making process isn't performing up to my preferred higher standards. It can be so very hard sometimes to separate who I am from what I do (and think and say and choose). My actions, words, thoughts and decisions are not ME, but merely the reflection (or occasionally, the shadow) I cast. Doing something "bad" doesn't make me bad (or good). It doesn't "make" anything.

Taking this question at face value, and treating it as an honest and heart-felt inquiry, the best possible answer (provided it is true, and it should be if I am not too badly cursed at the time) to the age-old question "how are you?" would be "grateful to be alive, right here, right now". The way Joey uses it to flirt, he implies to the person he says it to that they (obviously to his eyes) have good reason to be grateful to be who (he thinks) they are, alive and breathing, in the now.