Question: How are you?

When people ask, “Are you okay?” do they really want to hear the answer? I mean, honestly, we are often not okay, and when people ask, are they really saying, “You need to be okay,” or “Please tell me you are okay even though it’s obvious that you are not,” or “Please tell me what’s troubling you?”

There are so many possible subtexts to a mere “Are you okay?” it’s hard to know how to answer this seemingly simple question.

Most people don’t really have a lot of bandwidth for your problems. They’re immersed in their own, which is natural. We are all self-centered. That’s part of being human, like it or not.

So when someone asks if we’re okay, are they asking because they care, because they're nosy, because they need us to be okay, out of habit, or is it something else altogether? There’s a prurient interest we have, a sort of schadenfreude, which isn’t intentional, but has us heaving a sigh of relief when we hear that the naughty child at school wasn’t ours, or the person hit by the car wasn’t our relative, or the job loss wasn’t our spouse’s. It’s not that we’re happy that someone else is in pain; we’re just so damn relieved that whatever is not okay is not happening to us.

It’s a curious thing. Keith Johnstone, the brilliant improv theatre specialist, said that every time you tell someone that something is going well for you, it’s like you're kicking them. So does the converse apply? When we tell someone that something is shitty on our end, is that like giving our friend a hug?

In a word, yes. Not that it’s our intention to make someone feel better or worse based on our woes, but that’s the effect. “Boy, I though I had it bad!” we think, as we watch our poor friend suffer; we feel badly for them, but we also feel relief that it isn’t happening to us. It’s not callous; it’s human nature.

But let’s at least be honest about it. Life is not really that difficult and shitty for most people, though it truly is for some. Shouldn’t we consider doing something to help people who have it shitty rather than just be thankful that we’re not the shittees?

Something to think about.