It's OK if You're Not Ok. No One Who's Paying Attention Right Now, is.

Photo by Tiago Bandeira on Unsplash

“How are you?” I asked my dear friend Julie, as she fell down into her chair across from me with a loud exhale.

“I’m OK.” she replied almost immediately, with a squinting forced smile that I long ago learned meant she wasn’t being completely truthful.

“Let’s try this again,” I said, slowing down and looking directly at her. “Really… how are you?”

Tears quickly pooled in her eyes and her voice quivered slightly as she shook her head and squeaked out, “I’m not OK.”

“Whew, thank God!” I shot back. “I didn’t want to be the only one!”

No one is OK right now.

At least, no one with working empathy and a knowledge of History who’s paying attention.

It is an emotional impossibility to be living in days like one’s we’re in here and to be fully unaffected. Honestly, that would be a massive red flag that something isn’t working right internally.

We all face existential crises differently.

Some of us approach them intellectually, moving into practical and pragmatic solutions to address the data in front of us.
Others of us lean into our spiritual or moral convictions, looking for the greater story playing out and trying to figure out how we can embody our beliefs in times that test them.
Those of us who are students of History, try and filter circumstances in the light of what has played out before in an effort to contextualize them.
Still others of us become active caregivers, expressing compassion toward people around us in an effort to minimize the collective pain in our midst.

But no matter how we choose to respond to these unthinkable, heartbreaking, destabilizing days, none of us are immune from the internal shit-kicking they bring—none of us.