So what is your opinion . . . .? I think that you shouldn’t ask a question if you are just TRYING to be polite, because then you end up being rude. I don’t think it IS polite for someone to ask a question if they don’t have time or the mental capability or capacity to listen to the answer. I don’t want to say that people don’t care about the answer, because I feel as if we all care, but sometimes we don’t have time for the answer. We might have somewhere else we need to be. Sometimes, it is not as if we are not smart enough that we don’t have the mental capability/capacity I mean we just might not be in the right space to listen to the answer. I know that when my mom was dying if someone were to have given me instructions on how I could have easily received a million dollars, I wouldn’t have been able to listen and remember. So that is what I mean by not having the mental capability. It could be that we are distracted, we have too much on our minds to listen to the response. So . . . to me, it is not polite to ask a question if we are just trying to be polite and we really aren’t going to listen to the answer. What do you think?
What sparked this whole post was something I witnessed recently where one person asked another person a question, but then when the second person started to answer the person who asked had a face that screamed, “When can I interrupt to leave?” Now, I know I am assuming things by looking at people, but I felt bad for the second person because they were excited as they started to answer, but as they began picking up on the attitude of the person who asked they became sad because they realized that the person didn’t really want an answer. And that is where I am saying the question shouldn’t even be asked. Why bother?
What also comes to mind is when people say, “How are you doing?” as a greeting. Instead of just saying “Hello.” They say, “How are you doing?” as they walk on past. They really don’t mean it as a question they want an answer to, they just use it as their form of greeting.
Perhaps it is such a habit for some people to ask that they don’t stop themselves when they are in the don’t-have-time or can’t-really-engage stage. I don’t know. That is kind of what what I am asking.
What do you think?
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