How Are You?

Navigating a world of both horror and joy

This illustration by Andrea Ucini at my desk serves as a reminder of equanimity.. Thanks to On Being for the art.

How are you?

Unsure how to answer that question these days?

Me too.

I tend to have two answers, one quickly doled out in elevators and when rushing to the A train or meetings, and another where I take a breath, assess whether the person I am asking actually cares or (and this is important) has the capacity to hear the truth.

a. Oh, you know, as well as can be. <insert smile and shift to the weather>

b. Oh, you know, it's been rough. <insert list of weight I am carrying around my heart, and increasingly, my perimenopausal body>

I struggle with the in between. When things are absolutely terrible, I feel a permission to be honest and feel my feelings deeply. When things are wonderful and I feel happy, I want to beam that sunshine on all. When things are both, I can’t find my center.

There are horrors and there are joys, and it is our job to seek equilibrium in that. I wrote down this line last weekend after eating breakfast tacos and tortas near the tennis courts in Inwood Hill Park with Ben, one of my favorite ways to spend a weekend morning. What a bright spot in the week. I tried so hard to keep focused on that happiness and not let the sour of the news and injustice seep into the morning, but there it was, side-by-side with us on the bench.

I’ve listened to the show “Terrible, Thanks For Asking” for several years. It’s hosted and created by

Nora McInerny

and features people taking an honest approach to that answer. The show was inspired by her experience with grief and she serves as a model for living an honest and authentic life (listen to her TED talk). I love that Nora recently changed the show's title to a simpler “Thanks For Asking.” Because it’s not always terrible, and all answers are acceptable.

I began listening while I was working at The Wall Street Journal, around the time that a dear friend lost her parents and Ben’s father suddenly passed away. It was a sad and challenging time and navigating everyday life, including my growing career, while holding onto the truth of death was confusing and tender. I often escaped the newsroom for a quick cry in the restroom or mother’s room before returning to my desk where I got my work done. I soon found the busier I kept myself, the fewer bathroom stall crying sessions were necessary.

Being emotional is not the same as being fragile, or so says psychologist Lisa Damour. But sometimes, my emotions feel so big that I feel fragile. My mother tells me I should learn to compartmentalize (love you, Mami), but what if compartmentalization feels a little too much like lying? By compartmentalizing, you essentially create separate realities within your mind, cordoning off one part of your personality from another. For someone like me (perhaps you too?) this feels a lot like my childhood where I was taught my emotions were too big and where I was told things I saw and knew were wrong were not really happening or I did not really understand them.

Today I know my truth and I know what is happening in the world today is very, very wrong. I no longer want to gaslight myself. Compartmentalizing feels dishonest and inauthentic in the face of that truth. And maybe sometimes we’re meant to allow the raging sadness light the way toward justice. Maybe it’s not meant to be set aside for another day.

And yet, I get it. Sometimes it's just easier to put a feeling or thought in a box until a later time when you can get to it. Often there is no choice: it's the only way to survive. But go too long stuffing feelings into boxes and it’s hard to figure out where the rotten smell is coming from as they begin to rot.

Before writing this I was reading a Bluesky account that lists people “politically arrested, detained, or disappeared by the administration,” something my small mind never thought could happen HERE. I’ve been thinking of two of my favorite local businesses run by immigrants, businesses I am afraid to mention by name for fear of drawing attention to their storefronts, and feeling such love for who they are and what they contribute in my world. I also listened to the birds, watching them in their spring frenzy pushing forward to create life. Yesterday, I touched the fuzzy buds that feel like kitten ears on the magnolia upstate as they start to burst out of their fuzzy and safe cocoons. I cooed at the buttery daffodils as they make their impossible climb toward the sky.

How do we make sense of this disconnect? How do we move forward when the swirls threatens to take me under? If compartmentalization feels like lying, then what's the alternative when everything feels too big, too contradictory? Perhaps there's a middle path between forcing emotions into separate containers and drowning in their overwhelming current. Mindfulness practices suggest we can cope with challenges with a more peaceful mindset, and equanimity is considered one of the 'Four Immeasurables' essential for developing compassion and alleviating mental suffering. It seems what I'm seeking might be closer to equanimity than equilibrium—that even-minded mental state toward all experiences regardless of their origin. That commitment to riding the wave of emotion rather than trying to contain the ocean in an impermeable Hefty bag.

There are horrors and there are joys, and it is our job to seek equilibrium equanimity in that.

This understanding doesn't make the weight any lighter, but it does give me a path forward. When someone asked "How are you?" I can practice pausing, breathing, and choosing honesty when it feels safe to do so. And then I let them manage their own feelings (THAT is a topic for another entire essay). Not compartmentalization, not emotional flooding, but a compassionate integration of all that I feel and see. It’s not always pretty, and some days the balance tips heavily toward one side, but this clumsy attempt at equanimity can be my quiet rebellion against a world that asks us to choose between numbness and overwhelm. Perhaps true authenticity lies in this messy middle—fully feeling both the daffodils and the disappearances, and letting both move us into right action and deeper living.

May we be led by that light.

Love Haiku for You When Things Feel Difficult But It's Ok for Things To Be Difficult Because Things Aren't Always in a Rigid Binary and Sometimes Things Can Be Nasty but Also Be Sweet and Ok Too Like Pickling

I love you more than
Cabbage loves sealed tight jam jars
With big time to rot

Basie Allen (2022)

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