How are you?

I always feel like I need to be able to answer the question: "How are you?" in a deep way.

Not just when my close friends ask me that question, but even if I ask myself that question. It really really bothers me, when I don't know how I am doing, or I can't provide some deep blow-your-mind-away insightful response to that question.

Sophomore year of college, I had a roommate who was really bad at answering this question. My guess is because she wasn't really in touch with her feelings. She was more into her personal hobbies and interests, and probably didn't think about her feelings or how she was doing very often. Every time, I asked her how she was doing, she would hesitate and not know how to answer, and then be like: stop asking me that. 

I feel like a lot of people, when they're asked "how are you?", they'll just be like: I'm good. work is good/busy/tiring. Blah blah blah is going on in my life. going to XYZ vacation in a few weeks, so I'm excited. 

Like basically, they list off some events in their life, but they don't talk about heart-level stuff or deep revelations that God revealed to them about their heart. 

It's hard for me to consider someone a close friend if the friend doesn't share heart-level stuff. In the same way, if I am unable to "share" heart-level stuff with myself (aka, if I'm just unaware of what's going on in my heart), I get really bothered. Like why can't I come up with some deep answer to that question? Why is my mind going blank when I think about how I'm doing?

The past year has had a lot of highs and lows. Overall, more joyful and happy as a whole. But the "problem" with that, is when you're super happy in life, it's really hard to come up with a deep answer to "how are you doing?", because the answer is that you're just so happy. And you're really enjoying hanging out with friends and significant other. You enjoy church, ministry, cell group, friends, work, activities and you're truly living in the present and not thinking too deeply about how your "heart" is doing. Everything seems happy and fine. But for some reason, I'm not able to live like that very long. I don't feel alive or like myself if I can't come up with some deep insightful answer to: "how are you doing?"

If I can't answer that question deeply, I feel like it means I am not really connecting to the deepest parts of my psyche and heart. That connection is what makes me feel human and feel like myself. That connection and understanding provides meaning for me, like I understand who I am, what I am living for, and what my convictions are. 

This is why I have this blog. When I don't have deep insights/thoughts, I feel like I'm not really living. I'm not really alive. I'm just going through life, and will forget this part of life because I'm not thinking deeply enough to remember it. 

Anyway, this is a pretty confusing blog post, I know. One of my close friends told me recently that I don't really have good logic. I have opinions and thoughts, and attempt to put logic around it, but the logic doesn't make any sense at all. That's probably the essence of this blog post. But that's what makes me unique. I'm deep and complicated, because humans are pretty deep and complicated too.