What Do You Say When Someone Asks, "How Are YOU?": Moving Beyond the Mundane into the Unexpected.

Sometimes the answer is bigger than the mundane.

Let’s take a break to actually think about that question, “How are you doing?”

How do you usually answer when people ask this question? I would guess most of us say either “Fine” or whatever that person wants to hear from us.

I had a phone call with my old friend David the other day. He asked me how I was doing.

I told David, “Quite frankly, my heart hurts today.”

I didn’t sound like Eeyore when I said it, I didn’t say “Woe is me”, I didn’t say “that person over there in the batting cage hurt me!” I simply said, “My heart hurts.”

David responded, “Is that good or bad?”

Without thinking I said, “It’s appropriate.”

Sometimes hearts hurt.

And it goes beyond good or bad.

It is bigger and more complex than good or bad.

I also know from how I have been processing my emotional and spiritual journey lately my heart may hurt and fifteen minutes later my spirit is soaring above the trees blissfully from an insight gleaned from having a heart that hurts.

See, therein lies the juiciness, the richness, the jelly inside the donut.

It is when we allow ourselves to be authentic enough to give space to our hurting hearts we grow. If we deny ourselves that process by cloaking it in whatever spiritualism or feel-goodism that is currently in style, we are like that chair without a leg: it just doesn’t work in the long run.

I may have sounded like I have been feeling like a victim here lately and believe me, that wasn’t my intent.

Life is complexly wonderful. Rumi talks about his field, one I enjoy inhabiting. He describes it like this:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”

When the heart hurts, it is bigger than labels like good or bad. The world, and the heart, is too full to use language and to talk about. It simply is appropriate and waiting to be engaged, to be held, to be processed fully.

The heart is a powerful companion and collaborator. It wants to be felt in its entirety. I hear my heart swelling and singing in this moment and in that earlier moment.

It is beyond our comprehension, infinitely divine. I am grateful.

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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Coming soon - more creativity camps, playgrounds and workshops to grow yourself artistically (and hey, just for fun!)

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