Have you ever tried?
Quite apart from a catchy little snippet straight out of a 90s dance remix [aside: what part of our brain decides to latch on to just two lines here and there, refusing to grace us with a full song's worth of aural pleasure (albeit a dubious phrase on this occasion) when we turn on our internal headphones? It's as if somehow we knew Google would soon replace our need for a comprehensive long term memory ("so long as I can remember enough to type into a search engine...")], this pithy two-part questionnaire almost dares us. What, you've never been in a state of blissful contentment? My good man, have you so much as attempted to put in the necessary effort?
But maybe there's some truth in it. While it might seem illogical at first that we can work ourselves into a state of tranquility, given that life is a constant quest to make ourselves feel good (my latest theory), surely peace is just another state that we can manufacture in our minds?
Australians have an interesting way of greeting each other. The phrase, "How you going?" is a small, but subtle shift on the standard, "How are you?" that we Brits tend to favour - a variation which focuses on the person's current state. Another deviation comes from that other English-speaking land: like the Aussies, our ever less formal American cousins also lean towards the future, but their typical, "How's it going?" removes the power from the responder as master of his own fate, and instead focuses on how the gods are moving him around the board.
So who's got it right? Each question has its merit, but for now I'm going to adopt the Australian way, encouraging my friends to view themselves as the driving forces in their lives, able to dictate their own happiness, develop their own futures (change is fabulous so long as you're the instigator), and, most importantly, control their own mellowness.
