Tonight I spent SIX hours straight having some real talk with my daughter who is 14.
We hit on some big, deep stuff. Life lessons and whys and hows and whats of life. There’s no way I could even list it all. We covered the gamut of the beautiful and devastating things a human soul encounters during an Earthly journey. She was engaged and listening and as usual I am amazed at all she already understands, even though she’s just beginning in this life.
At one point I asked her, “Sarah, what do you say when a stranger asks you ‘How are you doing today?’”
Her reply: “Fine.”
I then asked, “Who taught you that? Did I ever teach you to mask your feelings? To tell people that you’re fine all the time when maybe you’re not?”
“No mom, but that’s just what everyone expects.”
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Why is this? Why have we all collectively decided as a society that it’s acceptable to put a false-always-happy portrayal of our lives out on social media and even when someone asks us directly, face to face, how we are, we fake it?
I know that everyone reading this has answered FINE when things were *not* fine. When you were stuck in the middle of a relationship crisis, or worried about money, or someone at work was making you miserable, or maybe your whole life had just been saturated with the gasoline fire that is grief-a close love had died and you were being swallowed up by the abyss.
I’ve done it. I’ve said I’m fine probably thousands of times when I definitely wasn’t.
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Next question is for you (and me): Why do we secretly want the other person, whom we’ve just asked how they are, to tell us this insincere but oh-so-socially-acceptable lie?
Do we really want to believe that everything and everyone is fine all the time?
It’s always snowing in the snow globe! Look at the happy faces on the townsfolk!
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And yet, we are now in the midst of a most critical time in our country. Our lives are all being affected by turmoil.
Enough us enough.
Tell me HOW YOU ARE. Really. The truth.
Say it:
I am worried.
I am afraid.
I miss my loved one.
My car broke down.
I might lose my home.
My kid won’t speak to me anymore.
My aunt was diagnosed with a terminal illness.
The divorce is unavoidable.
Whatever it is, just say it.
Healing begins when we are authentic. Empathy can happen if we understand each other fully. Compassion deserves a chance to show itself and make us all stronger for its efforts.
If I don’t know your struggle, how can I love you, as a fellow human being, through it?
We MUST do this on a micro-level before we can begin to connect all the dots and do it together on a macro-level. The human-kind level.
If I’ve never almost been homeless or never heard the story of a friend who’s been homeless then how can I empathize with the homeless person?
For every one of us struggling, and all of us do, there’s another one of us wishing we knew whether or not a single other person out there could understand what we’re going through.
Do it. Say your truth. I’ll say mine. We will hug and love can spread.
We are ALL in this together.
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