Okay?

"Hey, how are you?"

"Hi, what's up?"

"How you doing?"

"How's it going"

There are so many variations on this question.  In today's society people are trained to ask this question.  The response is also trained.

"Okay."

Really?  I mean, really?  We have been trained to not really care about the question or answer for most people we ask or answer.  It's a banal, cliche salutation exchange that's been ingrained into our heads.

I try to fight it as much as I can.  I try to come up with different ways to say good.  But I don't want to mislead people if I'm having a crappy day.  Sometimes I admit I don't know.  Sometimes I'm cryptic because it's none of their business what's really going on with me.

Honestly, though, I answer 'okay' a lot.  It's an automatic response.  But it's not always true.

Recently I read a great book called, cold tangerines by Shauna Niequist.  In it she writes wonderful insights about life, seeing the extraordinary in things that happen every day, to all of us.  One of my favorite passages is in the chapter called "good causes".

Being with Julia and Doug today made me think about the idea that everything is okay.  That idea is nothing but cruel in its untruth.  Okayness is a thin scab that rips off every once in a while and exposes a river of blood and infection, an inroad to the whole body.  We live in reasonable peace, accomplishing things and doing what we're told and expecting taht if we behave, we will be rewarded; that for living quietly and industriously, for donating to Easter Seals and letting people merge in front of us on the highway, we will be given good things, good lives.  And then something happens to us; we get that phone call of that feeling or that doctor's report, and everything changes.
     The sky might as well be red, the solid ground replaced with seawater, because it is a different world.  It's like a chemical change, charges reversing from positive to negative.  And in the midst of this change, you look around and realize that everyone else seems to be doing fine, that you must be the only one who notices this change.
     We preserve the myth even though we no longer believe it.  We insist that everything is okay.  But we're kidding ourselves.  Can you look into the eyes of the people around you and really believe that everything is okay?  We want to believe that things roll off our backs, that we are tough and world-wise, and that we're all holding it together pretty well.  But you which door you lock behind you when you're crying so hard you can't see.  You know what word or image rips off that scab.  Everything is not okay.
     In all my scramblings to do the right thing and be the right person, I miss some of the most important things I think God might be asking me to do.

I'm certainly not okay.  I'm not even trying to listen to God half the time these days.  I'm starting to shut down in some ways.  And I'm not sure I care enough to reverse it.  Maybe the spiral down will fuel more writing.  I'm sure eventually I'll care again.