Are you OK?

One more week has flown by...I hope everybody is doing well.

This week I encountered a profound and somewhat personal revelation. I am not sure why this happened now, as what I experienced was not something new or particularly groundbreaking, but for some reason, this week it mattered more.

I was sat at a table having a drink with some work colleagues as part of saying farewell to a certain individual. It was a joyful atmosphere filled with stories from the past few years and talk about the forward looking journey of this individual, not just as part of a career transition, but more as a reminder of the human side of their personal lives. And while I was sat there, listening to everybody talk and joke about stuff, I realised that each of the stories in their own way, mirrored parts of everybody else’s experiences around the table as well. But what struck me most, was not what was being said, or that everybody had similar experiences at some point of their life or another...it was actually everybody’s behaviours that revealed glimpses of confusion, a sense of loss and a presence of fear of an unexpected void that follows from thinking of new adventures ahead and yet, nobody actually was brave enough to voice their thoughts and ask if the individual was truly ok.

On my walk home, I started thinking about how for some reason my realisation made me feel a little blue. Why was everybody shying away from asking the particular individual how they actually felt about their new beginning and the unknown and if they were truly ok with saying farewell? Why were we all sat there face-to-face, interacting with each other’s emotional cues, joking with plenty of eye contact, but lacking the empathy to bridge the connection and ask how the individual or ourselves truly felt? And in the wider context, why do we do go day-in, day-out, relying on messages, emojis, flying jokes, puns, superficial comments, but no real sharing of feelings and the simple act of asking each other if we are genuinely ok?

Is it because in most cases we are not sure if we are emotionally ready for the answer that may await on the other end of the question? Is it because we are not certain if we have the time, energy and motivation to actually listen to the answer that comes back? What if someone says they are not ok, but we may have already judged that they are totally fine? What if they reveal that they are struggling, but we may feel that we are struggling more? What if by asking the question, we may expose how we feel and reveal that we , ourselves, may not actually be ok?

Or...is it perhaps because we are actually thinking we are doing great until someone asks us if we are ok, and then suddenly we are not so sure? In a way this is absurd...surely, if we are ok, we can be able to answer yes straight away and move on! But the fact that we maybe hesitated, must therefore mean the question was pertinent, that we are not really ok, and that we should probably investigate why that is. It seems ridiculous to suggest that the question itself is to blame for the negative feelings that come after it.

On the surface, this holds up. After all, why would a concerned friend inquire about their companion’s okay-ness status, if not because they’ve been given reason to be concerned?

But that is the trap of the question. Are you ok? implies that we may not seem ok, and that is enough, if we’ve been striding around convinced of our contentedness, to catch us off-guard. We hesitate out of shock that someone would even suggest that we’re not ok, and all of a sudden that very hesitation seems like confirmation for their perceptiveness.

We arrive at the conclusion that the person asking may be onto something, that we’re not actually ok, despite previously believing to be, and that, therefore, we cannot trust ourselves to know our own feelings. We are ashamed and maybe even appalled at our own internal arrogance that things could ever be as ok as we believed.

What’s ironic about my rambling today is that some of you will read it and immediately think to ask me if I’m ok. Then, there will probably be a realisation that, actually asking, would go against the whole point of my above words, and a resultant reluctance and confusion about what to do, will follow.

Let me help. Everyone needs to be checked up on, by caring friends and colleagues, every once in a while. There’s no getting around it... sadly, due to stress, the rhythm of our work and lives in general and the pressure of our biases and our perceptions, we’ve all come to be too good at lying to ourselves and to other people and to be trusted to look after our mental health on our own. But the question we should ask, is not Are you ok?, but rather How are you feeling? And then, if there is a hint of hesitation in the reply, we should follow with What’s the matter?

How are you feeling? gives much more room for diversion than Are you ok? But, the key question is What’s the matter?, because instead of leading to an endless trap of worries about self-deception and quantifiable okay-ness, it leads directly to the matter. It defines something concrete, an issue we can understand and measure, a problem we can discuss and learn to cope with or overcome.

I feel I have digressed a lot this week...and somehow, after re-reading what I have written , I seem to have come full circle, to back where I began and my revelation of sitting at a table with friends, sensing people shying away from asking a maybe difficult question and walking away, feeling sad about it. So, I will leave you here and close by asking...

How are you all feeling? Take your time.