fine, just tired

Jun 18

Dear Reader,

Someone sits down across from me and I ask how they have been. Almost without thinking, they say they are fine, maybe a little tired. We move on, because that is what the answer is designed to do. It closes the question gently and lets us get to whatever comes next.

But sometimes, twenty minutes later, the fine starts to come apart. Though nothing in the room has changed, they have only stayed in one place long enough for the first answer to lose its grip. What was tired turns out to be closer to disappointment, or to a loneliness they hadn't made room to feel.

I think most of us believe we already know what we are feeling. We can answer the question quickly, and the speed of the answer feels like proof that we are paying attention. But the quick answer is usually a headline. The mind produces it to settle things, to give the feeling a shape we can carry without having to stop. And a headline, by design, leaves almost everything out.

Naming a feeling is easy, and most of us are good at it. We can have the word ready before we have really felt anything. Sometimes the word is even a way of stepping around the feeling, a tidy summary we hand ourselves so we don't have to stay with it. The harder thing is to leave it unnamed for a while, long enough to be surprised by what is actually there.

I do this too. I will tell myself I am frustrated when the truer word is hurt, because frustration is easier to stand inside. Frustration keeps me busy and a little above it all. Hurt asks me to slow down and admit that something reached me. The label I choose tends to protect me from the version of the feeling I would rather not have.

This week, when someone asks how you are, you do not have to answer differently. But you might notice the answer as you give it, and wonder, if it left anything out.

Yours in the journey,