How ya doin’?

A common greeting, yes?  I often wonder what a person’s response means.  Sometimes I think we just respond robotically with no related meaning.

When I’m asked, I typically respond “Pretty darn good”; or sometimes just “Good”.  I suppose that means I’m on the glass-is-half-full side of the proverbial optimist/pessimist scale.

Optimist:

The person who makes it possible for the pessimist to know how happy he or she isn’t.

Unknown Sage

When I ask back, “How about you?”, I often hear:

     Not too bad                  Oh, I don’t know

     OK, but it’s early           I’m alright

     Hanging in there             Tired

     Doing the best I can         Don’t ask

And occasionally:

I’m blessed                  Terrific!

What’s your go-to reply?  I don’t know if there is any correlation between this generic greeting and response, but it does beg the question, “No really – How are you doing?”

Today we seem to be bathed by stress; loaded with To Do lists; pressured by deadlines; surrounded by electronic interruptions; and traffic; can’t leave out the traffic:

            Welcome to Denver:

The morning rush hour is from 5:00 to 10:00 AM. The evening rush hour is from 3:00 to 7:00 PM.  Friday's rush hour starts on Thursday.

Forget the traffic rules you learned elsewhere.  Denver has its own version.  The car or truck with the loudest muffler goes next at a 4-way stop.  The truck with the biggest tires goes after that.  Blue-haired, green-haired, or cranberry-haired ladies driving anything have the right of way all of the time.

North and South only vaguely resemble the real direction of certain streets.  University and Colorado are two boulevards that run parallel.  Geometry evidently not working at altitude, these streets intersect south of C470.

Highway 285 runs North, South, East and West and every direction in between; it can be found in every section of the Denver area making navigation very interesting.  You can turn west onto southbound 285; you can turn north onto westbound C470; and you can drive southeast on the Northwest Parkway.  This is why Denver uses the additional driving directions of “out”, “up”, “in”, “down”, and sometimes “over”.

Construction barrels are permanent, and are simply moved around in the middle of the night to make the next day’s drive more challenging.  When you see an orange cone, you must stop and then move ahead slowly until there are no more cones.  There need not be construction, just cones.

If someone has their turn signal on, wave them to the shoulder immediately to let them know it has been accidentally activated.

If it’s 70 degrees, Thanksgiving is probably next week; if it’s snowing, it’s probably the weekend after Memorial Day.

If you stop at a yellow light, you will be rear-ended or cussed-out.  A red light means four more cars can go through.  Not three; not five.  Four.  Never honk at anyone.  Ever.  Seriously.  Never yield at a “Yield” sign.  The yield sign is like an appendix; it once had a purpose but nobody can remember what it was.

Just because a street on the east side of town has the same name as a street on the west side of town doesn’t mean they’re connected.    

                                  Unknown Sage

I think it’s best to pause from time to time (maybe while sitting in traffic LOL!) and do a quick inventory of our blessings and the status of our peace of mind, true?

Why don’t we take a quick inventory right now…  How ya doin’?

GAP

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.