There’s a strange kind of ache in the question, “How are you?”
It’s thrown around like small talk, like the weather or what you had for dinner. But every now and then, someone asks it and actually means it and you freeze. Because answering honestly would take more time, more courage, and more self-awareness than most of us are prepared for on a random Tuesday afternoon.
I’ve been on both sides of that question. As a doctor, I was trained to ask “How are you feeling?” — but often with a stethoscope in one hand and a prescription pad in the other. The question was clinical. Measurable. About symptoms, not souls.
But life doesn’t always present with symptoms that show up in blood tests.
And now, outside of medicine, as a not-quite-writer, not-quite-anything-sure-yet human, I’m learning how much this question can unravel someone. Including myself.
Because how am I, really?
Sometimes I feel like a house that looks perfect from the outside but has rooms I haven’t dared to enter in months. There’s dust on dreams I once had. There’s a light on in the hallway I can’t seem to switch off. There are unopened letters from emotions I’ve been avoiding.
Other days, I’m just… tired. Not the kind of tired that sleep fixes. The kind that comes from holding yourself together all day, from performing stability when you’re crumbling just a little inside. From constantly trying to be the version of yourself that everyone else expects.
But when someone texts me “how are you?” I type “I’m fine” with the same reflex I used to check a patient’s pulse. Quick, automatic, devoid of real presence.
We live in a world where honesty feels like oversharing and silence feels safer. Vulnerability is branded as weakness unless it comes with a redemption arc or a lesson at the end. But sometimes there is no neat ending yet. No bow to tie around the pain.
I remember one of my professors once said: “Patients don’t always need answers. Sometimes, they just need you to sit beside their pain without rushing it away.”
It hit differently. Because that doesn’t apply just to medicine. It applies to life. And maybe to this question, too.
So, what would it mean to actually answer, “How are you?”
Really?
It might sound like:
- “I’m hurting, but I don’t have the words yet.”
- “I’m okay in the daylight but unraveling at night.”
- “I laughed today. It felt good. I’d forgotten how that feels.”
- “I’m surviving. Not thriving. But I’m still here.”
And what would it mean to ask someone and truly be ready for the answer?
To not interrupt. Not fix. Not soften. Just… hold space.
I think that’s what we’re all really aching for. Not someone to rescue us. But someone to sit quietly, maybe pour some chai, and say, “You don’t have to perform wellness for me. Just be.”
Because here’s the thing no one tells you in your twenties or thirties: healing isn’t linear. And being human is messy. You can feel grateful and broken at the same time. You can have clarity in one area of your life and be completely lost in another. That doesn’t make you unstable. That makes you real.
So the next time someone asks you “how are you?”, pause.
Not out of politeness. But because it’s a chance. A small one. To tell the truth — or at least a softer version of it. To remind yourself that honesty isn’t a burden, it’s a bridge. And you’re allowed to cross it in your own time, at your own pace.
And if you’re reading this and no one’s asked you that question in a while, let me be the one:
How are you?
Really?
It’s okay if your answer isn’t pretty. It’s okay if you don’t even know.
Just know this: You’re not alone in the in-between. Not here.
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Previously Published on Medium
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