HEALTH PLUS:Two little words make up a simple phrase that has become laced with complexity. But that's fine, writes MARIE MURRAY.
‘How are you?” . . . “I’m fine.” So common, so predictable, so nebulous, yet so conventional is the response “I’m fine” to this formulaic greeting that it can be applied regardless of mood, disposition, state of health, mental turmoil or quiescence, in the midst of tragedy, or at the summit of happiness – in all of these instances, it is not inappropriate to answer “I’m fine” when asked how we are.
“I’m fine” has the capacity to mean anything, to mean everything and to mean nothing at all depending upon what we wish it to convey. It is a wonderful utterance. It can be voiced with a chirpy assurance, a dolorous exhalation, a bland neutrality, a humorous evasion, a stoical reassurance or with the most wonderful guilt-inducing sigh: “Don’t mind me, you go out and enjoy yourself. I’m fine.”
“I’m fine” is endlessly creative. It means whatever you wish it to mean, whatever you wish the recipient to interpret. Now what other utterance in the English language does that? It always succeeds. Its simplicity is stunning. Its brevity is powerful. Its convenience is invaluable. Its semiotics are impenetrable. That is why we love it, that is why we use it and that is why we retain it in social exchange.
Of course how one responds to “I’m fine” and the nuances with which it is uttered depend upon the relationship between questioner and respondent. The sharp, definitive clipped “I’m fine” invites no further commentary and no additional interrogation. “I’m fine” can mean the state of the respondent is no business of the interviewer. It can mean the subject is not for discussion. Or it can mean this is not the appropriate moment disclose one’s feelings.
Equally, the initial “how are you?” may open or close the conversation. It may be asked by stopping for an answer or by passing by swiftly. It may be perfunctory, casual or a most genuine wish to understand how another person is feeling.
Asking someone “how are you?” does not necessarily lack solicitude. Context determines meaning. For example, the parameters of “how are you?”, “I’m fine” are usually understood as ambulant greetings in the work place, where in the busyness of the day they convey hello and goodbye simultaneously, while also saying I see you, I recognise you and if time permitted we might engage in conversation.
Social convention demands that we know the circumstances in which to ask and answer questions, the boundaries around them, the relational contexts in which we omit, restrict or extend them and the levels of information we provide in response to them, all depending upon who is asking the question and the situation in which the question is being asked.
But it is in marital relationships that “I’m fine” comes into its own. “I’m fine” in marital exchange can be deeply nuanced if provided by a woman in the aftermath of a difference in views. Men fear it most because “I’m fine” can be so semantically laden that most men know they will fail to decode it precisely: the deep structures of intersubjective affective communication being something they are traditionally less skilled and less practiced in deciphering.
A man knows if another man says he is fine, that he should accept that response. Face value is rated among men. But men equally know that does not usually apply when a woman says “I’m fine”.
Men know women’s semantic superiority will outwit them every time: that “fine” may not mean fine: that “fine” may mean a whole range of things he has to understand quickly, that “fine” may signal an offence which he must interpret and respond to with alacrity, sensitivity, contrition and the correct answer. This defeats the majority of men.
In discussion between John Bridger and Charlie Croker before the robbery in the film The Italian Job they agree that “I’m fine” really means “freaked out, insecure, neurotic and emotional”. They seem to recognise that men hide their anxiety from each other behind the stock assurance that they are fine and that men don’t expect each other to investigate it further.
What is most interesting about their conversation is that instead of saying how they feel, they seem to agree that not saying how they feel – by instead saying “I’m fine” – hides how they feel and simultaneously reveals how they feel, and in this paradoxical way they manage to articulate their real feelings to each other.
Now if you can follow that you are a probably a woman and if not, you are a man, and that’s fine!
Clinical Psychologist Marie Murray is the director of Student Counselling Services in UCD