We usually ask people how they are whenever we meet them, whether we meet them for the first time or repeatedly. We always start with a “hello” or a “hi”, and then proceed to ask how they are doing. It usually frustrates me when people ask how I am and what I have been up to. When I say that everything is fine, they are not content, and want to know more. When I explain in detail what I have been up to, they don’t listen to what I am saying and talk about their daily life. Whether I say that I have been busy, or I have been bleeding from head to toe, their response is always next to “cool” before moving on to talk about their things.

These phatic communication skills are a sign of stupidity when one doesn’t realize that they are exercising them while at the same time saying that they really want to know. I have people at my university and around the place where I live ask me to email them something. When I do, they say that they love getting my emails and that I should send longer emails to them. However, they do not have the decency to respond to such emails; not even an acknowledgement that “hey, I got what I told you to send me, bye.” No, they will not respond at all to numerous emails. When I run into them online, they will always ask why I haven’t emailed them. When I ask them why they haven’t responded, they say that they’ve been busy.

Similarly, I keep in touch with all of my old friends. These people never respond to my calls, yet I do my part of the “friendship” by inviting them to places they might be interested in. They never respond, and when they do, it’s a few weeks after. They tell me that they have been busy and that they couldn’t make it [duh], and that I should invite them next time and that they really appreciate it. It’s a no brainer that everyone appreciates a free assistant who keeps you up to date on events.

You email someone a few times, and they never reply. And when you stop emailing, they tell you that they love getting your emails. May be people think that everyone’s childish; just like you can ignite the hope within a kid to communicate more by showing them something like a retarded candy or something, people think that the sentence “Oh I love hearing from you” is going to ignite something similar within an adult, so that you email or keep contacting them like a retard while they don’t respond to you. They have this ego that they are someone very important, since they must have something that makes others keep saying hi to them while they show to everyone that they are super busy. Everyone’s busy, and everyone can ignore “such people” also. What they don’t realize is that their worth is only high in front of kids. In the real world, well, there is no real world for them yet. They should be prepared to find out their real worth when they come into a real world.

People think they are the busiest in the world when they are involved in childish tasks, childish activities, and have the ego that they are very intellectual. It’s usually a sign of utter contempt for something that is happening in ones family life, or happening in ones’ mind or their own. Or it’s simply a level in life when one is unsure as to why they are, and what they are. So what should one do in such a situation? Keep telling everyone that they are utterly busy, and when other “unbusy” people come online or face to face, ask those details about their life as if you really want to know. Such people deserve to be ignored, and that’s normal.