The Most Dishonest Question We Ask
Why "Are you okay?" is often more about easing our discomfort than understanding someone else's. (Vol. 6; Issue 29)
You walk into a room, see your romantic partner weeping, and you ask:
Are you okay?
You witness someone trip on a curb crossing a street. The person winces in pain. You ask:
Are you okay?
A friend asked me right after I learned I’d need an open-heart surgery to replace an infected aortic valve:
Are you okay?
This well meaning friend asked it repeatedly until, finally, I explained the situation and my feelings about it. I felt a bit anxious, but I was also confident the procedure would go well (which it did). He stopped asking the question.
We’ve all been on the receiving end of this question. We’ve all uttered it ourselves. We’ve heard it asked in movies or in TV shows whenever someone appears distressed.
This illustrates the common practice of using indirect communication to avoid personal vulnerability. In fact, the words “Are you okay?” may represent the most dishonest words in the English language.
The anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski1, used the phrase, “phatic communion,” to refer to speech whose purpose is NOT to convey information, but to manage the anxiety of contact. “Are you okay?” is exactly what Malinowski meant. The question provides a lozenge for the asker to swallow, soothing the discomfort that arises when witnessing another person's distress. We reach for a phrase that will, most efficiently, make the tremor stop.
People ask “Are you okay?” thousands of times a day, often a half-second before they begin to walk away.
Why is this a problem, and why have I come to loathe it?
The grammar itself reveals the core problem. "Are you okay?" is a closed question. It permits two answers. Only one of them is socially survivable. The question has been engineered to extract one answer:
Yes!
The question, “Are you okay?" is not an opening. It closes the door just as it begins to open. We are meant to ensure it’s closed by speaking a reassuring:
I'm fine.
The question serves the asker, not the asked.
How might you respond to any of the three examples in a more authentic, vulnerable way?
If you walk into a room and observe your partner weeping, you might say:
Oh, love, I hate to see you suffer. What’s making you cry?
The asker is a) sharing how he or she is feeling in reaction and b) asking a direct question instead of “Are you okay?”
If witnessing someone trip on a curb, you might say:
I just saw you fall. That looked like it hurt! May I help you in some way?
I would have felt more seen and heard if, in my personal example, that dear man had asked me:
How are you feeling about the upcoming surgery?
Or:
I think I’d be so frightened about open-heart surgery. How are you feeling about it?
The first response directly asks me about my emotional reaction. The second one begins with a vulnerable statement, and then ends with a similar inquiry about my own feelings.
Sometimes it is best to respond to another’s distress with only emotional presence and no words. It signifies a willingness to remain in the room with another person’s pain without needing to repair it. Not being okay in the presence of someone who can bear it is one of the more precious things human beings can offer each other.
Our everyday conversations are filled with exchanges like this, phrases whose purpose isn't genuine communication but social comfort. Friedrich Nietzsche’s proclaimed:
Language is for lying.
Other common examples include:
How’s the weather today? (A question requiring either no answer or an extremely superficial one; no one expects a meteorological breakdown.)
How are you doing?”/ Fine, thanks! (A standard exchange, rarely a genuine inquiry into health).
Returning to that “Are you ok?” question, let’s remember that, in truth, no one is truly “okay.” A human being is not a switch with two positions. We are, as the psychoanalyst Philip Bromberg2 puts it, always “standing in the spaces” between various states of self. We might feel frightened or competent, grief-stricken or joyful or walking along while mentally composing a grocery list. One is never really “okay.”
Our digitized, anonymized culture treats sorrow, dread and ordinary human anguish as malfunctions to be reset rather than part of the always-changing, emotional journey of life. We learn to fix things, to respond automatically. We rarely stop to reflect and be present.
Now that you’ve read this, I imagine you'll become aware, perhaps painfully, of how often people say to one another:
Are you okay?
I wish we, mature humans, already diseased by digital anonymity, would stop slamming the door on another person’s pain by asking that ridiculous three-word question. Reflexively asking it comes with a cost. Every time we ask someone if they're "okay," we may unknowingly be inviting them to hide the truth. And every time they answer "I'm fine," another opportunity for genuine human connection disappears.
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References
Malinowski, B. (1923). The problem of meaning in primitive languages. In C. K. Ogden & I. A. Richards (Eds.), The meaning of meaning: A study of the influence of language upon thought and the science of symbolism (pp. 296–336). New York: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.
Bromberg, P.M. (2001). Standing in the Spaces. London: Routledge.