How Am I, Really?
Someone asked me today, “How are you?”
A simple question, one I hear countless times a day.
But this time, it was different.
It wasn’t a polite formality or the start of small talk; it was a question that carried weight, asked by someone who truly knew me.
And for the first time, I couldn’t answer with, “I’m fine, thank you.”
In fact, I couldn’t answer at all.
My tongue froze because I realized I didn’t really know how I was.
I couldn’t say I was fine,
nor could I say I wasn’t.
It was as if I had lost my sense of where I stood within myself.
It felt strange! Llike when a teacher asks you, Does the dot go above the “i” or below it?
and you just stand there, blank,
as if you’ve never set foot in a classroom before.
That’s exactly how I felt, as though I had never set foot in life itself.
Yet the half-full side of the glass is this:
that moment woke me up to something I had long neglected.
my state of being.
Your state your body, your mind, your soul. Should never slip from your awareness.
And the most beautiful part of the story
is that the person who asked was someone I hadn’t seen in ages, someone whose question felt like a quiet return.
Perhaps that’s why it struck me so deeply because lately, I’ve been surrounded by people who ask “How are you?”
without ever caring to hear the answer…