How Are You

How Are You ?

It’s a simple question but it can lead to a conversation or just to a short sharp shrift and curt response such as……FINE!

I’ve got a confession to make (sponsored by Kleenex) – I wasn’t happy at school. My school housemaster would ask me on a regular basis how I was. And most of the time I wouldn’t elaborate, dance around the room or sing like Julie Andrews. I would often just say fine. I didn’t want to go into detail or let on that I wasn’t FINE. That I wasn’t happy, in my element or that I might just have had enough of school and as it matters, because it does, that I was experiencing bullying.

The teacher would tell my parents that all I ever said I was was FINE!

FINE was my way of minimum service communication, my way of courteously honouring the question with an answer but more importantly it was a sign that I was just shutting down and shutting off. I was keeping it in, holding back and not letting on at all that I was not happy at school.

FINE was a lie. In hindsight I would have elaborated, come out and told the truth and maybe even have taken the school’s eleventh hour offer to expel the main bully culprits (which I turned down for fear of retribution). FINE was a lie because I was keeping all that toxic energy and frustration in and learning escape mechanisms that only served in the short term and which manifested it in some weapons grade constipation and cogitation. What a price to pay to stay stum and to stay and to pretend all was ok.

So when someone asks you how you are and you reply FINE….are you really?

Silence is golden if you’re on a shamanic retreat but not if you’re suffering the effects of bullying be it at school or the workplace. It’s so much healthier, courageous and beneficial to say how you really are even if you feel obliged or quickly relieved by just saying FINE!

To this day, I’d rather just get on with the conversation than be asked how I am but that’s ok. THAT is FINE!

So how are you?