Cont'd-Emotional state of people today

How are you today? I have a problem with that question. You see, when I’m asked that, I pause, and I think about how my day has gone, and try to give an overall mood qualifier, “I’m happy, sad, excited, utterly terrified”, or whatever, along with a little reason why I am that way at that moment. Apparently, that’s a terrifying way to respond because apparently NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR HOW YOU ARE BUT THEY ASK ANYWAY! But a couple days ago, something happened that made me think a little more about my issue with the question. One of the people I work with has recently moved to the United States, and speaks English as a second language. She had her textbook with her, and I flipped through it wondering how English is taught to those who are learning. I found a page that discussed the question “How are you?”. It explicitly stated that one should never actually tell the asker how they are feeling, and that doing so was a great faux pas, and it said this was the case, especially in America, and that one should answer “Fine”, or “Good, thank you.”

What’s the problem here? It’s an issue in the way we think about our lives. It’s part of our culture to ignore how we feel, number one, and secondly, if we do inquire into the nature of how we are feeling, being anything other than “Good” or “Fine”, is an actual wrong answer to the question “How are you?”. You see, I think as people, probably worldwide, but especially in America, people are being pushed to forget their inner workings and encouraged to present themselves as a cohesive object. With no loose ends and no aberrations. This is a problem, seeing that, well first off, we’re not. I mean, just talking about myself, I’m not. I have organs doing their thing inside me, there’s my heart pumping, my stomach churning, my muscles contracting, and my spleen doing whatever it does. And finally, my brain! My brain is doing things and it’s not just a robot with preprogrammed responses. As much as I’d like it to, or no matter how effective I’d be if I didn’t, my brain is not a seamless computing machine. It’s weird. And definitely not always “fine”. You know, I think I’d be “fine” more often if every time I was asked “how are you” I was actually allowed to process how I actually felt instead of it just being a time to check and make sure no actual emotions were bubbling to my surface. Speaking of which, let’s check how depressed the world it. (insert map of depression here)

Oh, Of course. America is by far the most depressed country in the world. In terms of “days lost” to a certain affliction, Americans lose the most to depression of all the countries in the world. In fact, apparently over the course of one’s life American’s lose over 1400 days of life to dealing with and held down by depression. And that’s just one such mental disease.

Solution to this issue. It’s hard. But we might be able to solve it by starting a change within ourselves. We have an inside world. And that means we don’t have to follow the outside world. We have a place that is ours, that we can look at, observe, and care for. Do it. Be aware of what you’re thinking, be aware of how you’re feeling, because you’re worth it.