On a whim…

Fine, and Also Not Fine: Learning to Live in the Truth of “OK”

People ask how I’m doing, and I say I’m fine.

And in a narrow sense, I mean it.

What they’re usually asking—quietly, indirectly—is whether I’m frightened by a medical diagnosis. If that’s the question, then yes, I’m fine. I’m steady. I’m not hiding under the covers. I’m not waiting for catastrophe.

But if people knew the deeper question—

Are you untroubled? Are you your usual self? Are you moving through the world the way you used to?—

I suspect they wouldn’t ask it. And if they did, then finally, I could answer honestly:

No, I’m not fine.

But I am OK.

And OK, for me, means something like readiness. It means accepting the whole terrain—life, uncertainty, endings, beginnings—and still being able to write my way through it. OK means: I’m present. I’m listening. I’m awake to what matters.

The truth is, my single source of anxiety right now is not mortality—it’s finishing the work I’ve begun.

That might sound strange, but I feel more alive in the writing than anywhere else. Not drained—energized. Not collapsing—expanded. It’s the kind of aliveness that brings tears the way Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony brings tears, or Turandot, or remembering the first time you stood before Monet’s water lilies. Tears that arrive because something beautiful just told the truth.

No one rushes in to diagnose you when you cry at art.

No one prescribes counseling because you were moved by wonder.

For too long, I practiced the art of locking everything down—the quiet discipline of emotional tidiness. But now when I write, if I stumble onto an image that rings clear and honest, how could I not weep? If I didn’t, I’d wonder whether the writing had lost its pulse.

And so tonight, I find myself tired.

Not from overwork.

Not from illness.

Not from fear.

I’m tired from being misunderstood.

I used to imagine the “solitary life” of a writer as long hours in a quiet room. But now I see it differently: solitude is what happens when your inner truth no longer fits into the questions people know how to ask.

Even so—I return to the page.

Because I’m not fine.

Because I am OK.

And because writing, for however many days I’m given, is the most alive I have ever felt.

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