These days...

These days, when someone reaches out and asks you how you are, I think it takes a lot of courage to say the words 'not okay'. The 'not okay' maybe due to a trivial thing or maybe for a big reason. Like 'missing a morning cup of coffee not okay' or some 'life changing commotion underway not okay'. But we don't say it. I notice that, that simple question a friend asks, comes with such a loaded answer. I can almost hear the reel turning in my head deciding what to say, before I do with a '...going great, ya'. I suspect, I'm not the only one. The point isn't about how life has become. The point is, how you and I have become. We'd rather not say what we mean. What we think. What we feel. At that very moment. And that is why we don't connect with our friends any longer. We don't tell our friends what we used to, any longer. We don't seek them and we don't let them seek us. The things that made our childhood. The secrets we bonded over. We'd rather not. We don't share how we feel about our spouses. We don't tell how we feel with our children. We don't tell which childhood memory still haunts us. We don't talk any longer about what went through our minds sitting alone in a coffee shop, however rare that maybe now. We don't talk about that dreadful fear of losing our dreams, while working out the daily rut of life. Having a home now but not having enough pictures of different havens we found elsewhere. Not having written that film in black and white. Not about the painting we liked or the poem we read, which stirred something deeper. The touch of a hand and the safety and security of love and how we rediscovered it in the most unlikely places. The pain of losing a loved one and the joy of welcoming a new one. And how that's changed us in the most unsuspecting ways. How the people we hated are not so hateful any longer or the people we loved are not so loved any longer. How a person we met recently reminded us of the lost literature of our lives and the precious chats we had with grandpa. The dreadful fear of forgetting the story we wrote with our minds and in our subconscious when we were young, thinking the time is yet to come. That fear of forgetting that self. Losing ourselves. We don't tell the good and beautiful and we don't tell the bad and ugly. We also don't believe in' time' any longer. That it watches over us and makes moves. We don't seem to believe that minds connect and sync with a certain vibe. That there maybe a reason why a long lost friend suddenly called you or felt strongly enough to do that. He or she doesn't know why either. But they did anyway. And we? We answer them with 'not enough' soul material. Both sides know there's more. Both sides go back unfulfilled. I think we don't connect with friends because they knew us 'from the time' when nobody else 'from the right now', knew us. They know what made us. And we are dead scared they'd bring it up. Coz' deep inside, that's the secret we are running away from. That they know we'd rather fill our Sundays discussing films and scripts or paintings or whatever else, rather than planning parties. That'd we'd review the books and the lines we liked rather than fuss over what's for dinner. That we'd rather not 'plan our time' but 'spend time on' the idea or the dream we woke up with. We are afraid to face the fact that we are unfulfilled, in some way or the other. We are happy, but we are still, unfulfilled. We want to run away from the fact that such a possibility exists. If we face it, we may have to examine it and we are worried about what it might make us do. And who has the energy for that any longer? Our hearts are already full of hurt caused by others. Who has time for those we inflict on ourselves. Not all is gloomy but I think we are constantly struggling to reach a conclusion. Who are we really? The one from the past or the one from the present. Or the one we will become in future. And amongst that that the feeling that as we become older, it'd be too late to pick up the paintbrush. To join that music class. To dance as if nobody is watching. To... I think, this is what we didn't account for. Love for others. Love for life. And love for self. While the textbook answer says we shouldn't have to choose, we didn't know we'd have to, even if it is only an illusion.

The questions, I suspect, are real to all of us. And I think that is why, these days, when someone reaches out and asks you how you are, it takes a lot of courage to say the words 'not okay'.