Hello friends, my fond readers!

How are you all doing? I hope you all are fine and in healthy spirits🙂

But friends, since I hope so, it doesn’t mean it necessarily has to be so! That’s where I am gonna hit today🎯

Had I asked this question “HOW ARE YOU?” face to face, more than 99% of us literates would answer ” I AM FINE, THANK YOU. HOW ABOUT YOU?“

It is right from the beginning, we start learning conversations at school and at home we are taught how to meet and greet people, friends and family. We are taught the “How are you, I am Fine, How about you” thing, right from our childhood. Even a 3 year old answers the How are you question quite well that way and sometimes in peculiear accents too!

Do we actually know the meaning of the question❓I’d like you all to pause here for a while and introspect on the question and the answer you give when you are asked How are you?

I am sure you must have recalled how many times you answered “I am fine” when you were actually not! I am so sure about this because in a sample routine survey of my routine meets with family, friends and colleagues around (which if not more should comprise of atleast 50 people a day!), I find all of them answering “I am fine” when I ask them “How are you?”

Later during the day, atleast 35 of the 50 of them are cribbing or grumbling about something or the other or express their worries on one or the other issues.The rest 15 I might not have encountered again thereafter.

These days, I find many whatsapp and fb statuses filled with the quotes of managing stress, depression, negativity in life etc. and so on. Every other person around is going through some or the other worrysome, stressful situation in life each day and more so worsened during the pandemic or as aftereffects of the pandemic.

As they say, life is not easy. And it’s for everyone. Each one of us has varied prospects of inferring, establishing and facing difficulties in life. Earlier we all used to discuss life issues big or small with families and friends, sit together and sorted them out together. Today, the stress has worsened due to the “Virtual Assistance” era.

When we ask “How are you” over a WhatsApp message or infact in an FB direct message, the auto predicting service of the virtual assistance suggests the reply ” I am fine”. We tend not to share the actual “How are you” response and keep our small stresses piling up to grow upto a bigger heap until an appointment is bound to schedule with a psychotherapist (a whirling profession these days).

We come across various life DETOX services like Rajyoga Meditation, Online counselling, Anonymous Counsellors, Stress helplines etc. to prevent stress bound suicides, negative conversions into anti socials and many other such consequences of the greater adrenaline accumulation!

All the above are above board services in terms of human life betterment efforts and enhancing quality of life. But, my point here is, why can’t we simply answer the How are you question correctly even to our close friends and family. Whereas the Metaverse has been invented to shrink the world and ring us close,why has it rather created distance from our dear ones and closeness with our virtual assistants!

The other day, I asked a friend, (to whom I was talking after a long while) How are you?, She replied, “Bs sab thik hai” (All is fine) in a sobby tone.Just to reconfirm, I asked again. How are you really? She paused for a while, and then in the next half an hour conversation she told me HOW FINE she had been for the last more than a year! ( Hope you understood the euphemism). And at the end of the conversation, her sobby tone already had turned confident, and we ended our conversation on a good happy note when she said, now I am feeling FINE!

It’s then when I felt that if I hadn’t repeated my question, she wouldn’t have burnt the heap she had piled for that year. And since then this thought has been provoking me that a simple right answer to the question “How are you?” can solve a huge lot of problems and encroach upon the income of the psychotherapists!

Here, friends I am not saying to go blurt out your reasons for insomnia to all who ask you “How are you” throughout the day. But find atleast one or two to whom you can say” I am not fine!”. Don’t blindly type in the auto predicted reply, let your heart and mind assist you better!

On a positive note, it also infers to me that despite all worldly Pandora’s box of troubles, saying “I am fine” enhances positivity to stay and feel fine with the blessings of life irrespective of what’s bothering us back of our mind.

But amidst all this positivity and the mugged up reply of “How are you”, we have to remember that we all are humans and we need someone to know when we are really fine and when not! Specially for those at tender young ages who enter the sophisticated world with the formal “I am fine” get into a habit of hiding “I am not fine”.

They are on the threshold of facing the world as they step out of their nested zones, so we need to ensure that they know that answering ” I am not fine” is also OK as an answer to “How are you?” when asked by your confiders.

And readers, trust me, I am a good confider too, so feel free to answer me “I am not fine” whenever that’s the case.

I have also been through some “wife specific” jokes saying understand that a wife is not fine when she says I am fine in a subtle manner. And that’s absolutely true! Nothing to joke about it. But the point here is, that’s true for husbands too! And for that matter any other human who says I am fine but is actually not.

So from today, let’s be true to ourselves when we answer the question How are you? atleast to the ones who care about our well being. It’s ok to say, I am not well, I am not fine, I need help, I need to talk to you…

Remember, half the DIStress turns into EUstress as soon as you accept and say you aren’t fine! And it’s ABSOLUTELY OK!

Break the How are you, I am fine protocol! Be true to yourself and then you will be FINE!

In hope to hear from you, the stories of “NOW, I AM FINE” after you revealed to someone close that ” I AM NOT FINE”. when you were actually not.

And of course , NOW AFTER FINISHING THIS BLOG OF MINE, I AM ABSOLUTELY FINE!! as until now, I was bothered by the gap I took this time to connect back with you all🙂

Full In Novel Energy! FINE🙂

Signing off…

Shru!