“Ça va?” (How are you?)

I think this is the strangest question ever.

I agree this is not even close to the level of the oddness of the ultimate questions of the universe. But, if we restrain ourselves to the tiny humane scales, it, indeed, is a strange question.

I was in my office. Busy. As ever.

I walked out entering the corridor to get a photocopy from the common machine. I saw a colleague passing by. He probably was on his way to grab a coffee or use the restroom. He was in a hurry.

How do I know?

Well, I was admiring the neat tiles on the floor and wondering how many times per week does the janitor come to the Observatory to clean them. It was the noise of his quick foot steps that made me raise my head and pulled me out of my thoughts. From the world inside my head where I was appreciating the level of effort our janitor puts in his job.

Finally. The eye contact.

I smiled and said “Bonjour!“. (Hello!)

He replied “Bonjour! Ça va?” (Hi! How are you?)

The thunderstorm in my head begun – How am I?

How do I answer this?! I don’t know how I am! Let’s see.

Physically, I feel fine though I have been better because staring at a screen sitting on an uncomfortable chair in my office for ten hours straight is surely doing ‘wonders’ to my spinal cord which I will surely realize within several years.

Mentally, I have been holding up until now but I swear that if I get one more segmentation fault in my code, I will grab that ridiculous excuse for a chair and make sure my desktop experiences the kind of breakdown I am going inside my head.

Emotionally, I try not to think about my family which is approximately 6000 kilometers away from me. I also struggle hard to forget the fact that if I have a nightmare tonight neither I can run to my mother to hug her nor I can find someone to console me that it was just a dream.

Intellectually, I dealt with the panic of existential crisis twice during the past three weeks and one of them was the worst I have ever experienced in 25 years of my existence. The after effects still haunt me from time to time.

I opened my mouth to reply how I am, when I realized that he was not really interested in knowing the answer. This is something people just ask for the sake of saying something.

I don’t understand why they do this. For me, a smile and a hello were enough for a passing by gesture.

In fact, that smile was more than enough. Because when we smile, that mystical spark in our eyes serve as a source of positive energy spreading it around. The energy which propels us to believe in the importance of the eternal human connection. So it should be enough, right?

But apparently it is not.

So I replied, “Bien! Merci! Et toi?” (Good! Thank you! And you?)