Yeah, I'm Okay

Here's a conversation I can easily envision: My son's girlfriend asks, "Is your mom going to be okay?" And my son replies, "My mom is always okay." The phrasing might be slightly different depending on the son, but the gist is the same; they all believe I can handle pretty much anything. And I think they're right. When it comes to down to it, there really are only two choices: being okay or not being okay. Being okay is about doing what needs to be done, taking care of the minutiae of life, and finding joy along the way. Not being okay is curling up in a ball, shutting out the world, and wallowing in the suffering of life. I'd rather be okay.

Of course I have, like everyone has, had periods of varying length when I haven't been okay, but I think sometimes you need a few days of not being okay to get to okay -- if that makes sense. (And by the way, when I was teaching, "okay" was one of the words I discouraged my students from using. It doesn't usually say much, but it works here.) In those times of not being okay, I get it out of my system, in whatever way that is, and finally get tired of lying around and moping. Some things I just can't get out of my system; those I deal with the best I can.

In one of her early novels, Bodily Harm (I think), Margaret Atwood's main character marvels at the ability of planes to stay in the air, saying that the whole concept defies all logic. She comes to the determination that the only thing keeping them aloft is the collective belief of everyone onboard that they will, in fact, stay in the air, and that all plane crashes can be attributed to a lack, or at least lapse, of faith on the part of one or more passengers. I sometimes think of myself as one of those planes, and imagine that it's the collective belief of the people who know me best that I will be okay that actually makes me okay. And I'm okay with that.