Where are you Going?

'Where are you Going?' This strange title of a famous painting by Gauguin which I saw recently in the Amsterdam Hermitage Museum is apparently based on a traditional Tahitian greeting and it set me thinking.

There are times when our language usage and especially our sayings can reflect a lot of our culture and national view on life. In Britain we say formally 'Good morning', Good afternoon' or 'How are you?' Informally we say simply 'Hi there!' But to me 'Where are you going?' seems at first sight a strangely intrusive question to use as a common greeting. It made me wonder what kind of a culture gives rise to such a question and why they spend their time asking each other where they are off to. The Tahitian culture portrayed in Gauguin's colourful paintings seems laid back, natural, unsophisticated and primitive. Scantily clad young women with flowers in their hair adorn his works, suggesting a relaxed and exotic lifestyle with a touch of '60s free love thrown in. However, we are looking at the nineteenth century with our modern mindsets in a foreign land about which most of us know little. The question could perhaps imply instead a focus on activity and a purposeful, work-orientated people. On the other hand it could simply suggest a friendly, inquisitive sense of community spirit and neighbourliness. 'Where are you going? How are you doing? Are you OK? Can I join you?'

We are accustomed to our own greeting style, I suppose. 'How are you?' sounds, to our modern ears, casual and is often simply returned without being answered: 'So how are you?'. 'Hi there!' is even more relaxed and undemanding, asking nothing of the other person at all, just a friendly acknowledgement of their existence. However, if taken at face value, the question 'How are you?' could be threatening - similar to that famous counselling question: 'So how did that make you feel...?'  Demanding to know how someone is might be interpreted as a rather intrusive insistence on personal and private information. I remember once being asked by a perceptive friend as I arrived at church on what was for me a very bad day: 'How are you?' I could think of nothing truthful to say without exposing the specific anguish I was going through at the time and, rendered speechless, I floundered and said nothing. 'Oh, that bad!' said my friend, smiling sympathetically, without waiting for any further explanations. His response caused me to laugh, alleviating the embarrassment of the situation and saving me the trouble of explaining. British humour at its best!

Certainly, ' how are you?' puts the focus on our physical and mental state in a way that 'where are you going?' does not. It puts us on the spot if we are in fact having one of those days we would rather not talk about, unless we have learned to lie bravely. 'Where are you going?' presents no real problems unless, of course, we are off to commit murder or play truant from school. For us, 'Fine, thanks' is probably our most popular response and actually means nothing any more. We are now free to go on to discussing the weather - our next favourite subject of conversation. Many people are content to make do with such a shallow response as their question was not interested in eliciting the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, which would probably bore them and cost far too much time out of their busy lives.

So, after all that, I will save you the trouble and content myself with telling you that I'm off to the kitchen to make a cuppa! Thank you for asking.