There are some days in life when we don’t feel in our best of spirits. We feel let down, demotivated and alone but when someone asks us “how’re you?” We reply,
“I’m fine. What about you?”
How many times have we said the same without meaning it?
Why don’t we admit that we’re not fine and could really use a hug right now from someone who could listen and genuinely care?
Why do we try to conceal the fact that we’re humans too and we feel emotions which are sometimes not positive?
We always try to portray only the best version of ourselves to the society that we live in. We want to appear as strong individuals and make people feel that we could take up on any situation thrown at us.
But only you know how you feel and how much it deeply hurts.
The worst thing about acting strong is you don't get to express your inner feelings. You can't admit that something is affecting you and you just can't handle such strong waves of mixed emotions. So you live in DENIAL and day by day, the overload increases and ultimately it weighs you down, crushing your soul into pieces and leaving you numb.
But why do we have to lie?
If you ask me, I believe that the question "How are you? has become a greeting like "Hello". In many instances the questioner's facial expressions or tone of voice tells us that they don't have the time to hear how we truly feel and are least interested, thus we say "fine". Also we maintain an unsaid social hierarchy all the time and the people who don’t fit into the top levels are not supposed to know how we do feel. That is the masks we all wear.
So when we say that we are fine, we are expressing a socially normal response. We are supposed to be okay, so we will say so in order to move on to the next topic to talk about, to divert from the feelings that we truly feel just to be at the safer side away from the cross questioning or the judgmental eyes of many.
Even after all this, we ask them the same question.
Are we concerned about them?
Maybe. Maybe not.
but we still ask out of general politeness and courtesy with the same tone as they asked us in the first place....
..and they reply back with, "I'm fine too".