"How are you?"
"I'm ok"
How many times have we wanted to probe further and ask why somebody is just 'ok' and not good? I know I have at times. The word ok feels like a filler word sometimes; incomplete. I mean, how can someone only be ok?
What is ok? Well according to google it means:
adjective
satisfactory but not especially good.
Adverb
in a satisfactory manner or to a satisfactory extent.
So, the word okay is neither great nor is it bad; it is the in between. At the risk of sounding annoying, the work okay is actually ok to use especially when describing how you feel. Because sometimes life really is ok; could be better but it is not bad either. And sometimes we don't quite know how to articulate exactly how we are feeling because we are experiencing a multitude of emotions and so ok sometimes seems the best way to capture it all. I'll keep it all the way real, I've been ok for a while now. Around a year to be precise. Does it mean I've not had great moments? No! Actually, I've had some great times and enjoyable moments however the one emotion that has been a constant is that I am ok. At first I felt bad with being ok but then I realised that it is not a crime to be ok and I am comfortable with saying that. So, if you ask me how I am and I say 'I'm ok', please believe that it has taken me an overwhelming amount of time for me to even muster that. Because I know that I would much rather be ok than how I had been feeling for a while which was survival mode.
We do ourselves a great disservice when we even add 'just ok?' in response to what a person says. Yes, they are 'just ok' but they are here, showing up even when it has not been easy for them. And sometimes a person really is 'just ok' without any deep meaning to it. So yeah, sometimes take the ok at face value instead of conjuring things that are not. There is not always a meaning to everything a person says.
So, what exactly am I saying?
It's ok to be ok.