I learned recently that the third Monday of January is called Blue Monday and is supposed to be the most depressing of the year. Many of us can feel more down than usual as we return to work after the festive period, especially if we also have difficult things happening in our lives already. Last week I called a friend I hadn’t spoken with in months. We had been playing phone tag and when we finally got a hold of one another naturally the first thing he asked me was “How are you?” “Fine, how are you?” was my instinctive response. It took him a little longer to reply, and as he hemmed and hawed a bit I said, somewhat jokingly: “Oh you’re going to give me a real answer.” To which he immediately said: “Of course. I haven’t got time for anything else!”
I already knew him as a straight talker, and it made me wonder why I hadn’t been completely honest from the start. I wasn’t feeling particularly fine, and I also knew he was the sort of person with whom I could be transparent. We ended up speaking for almost an hour, during which we both shared some of the downs we were experiencing, not in a self-indulgent, gloomy kind of way, but in the spirit of open acknowledgment. Funny enough, this forthright conversation made me feel better. It didn’t take my blues away but it did remind me of something I very often forget: that it’s OK to not always be OK. It got me wondering more broadly about why so often we’re unable to be candid with one another during those periods in our lives when we’re having difficulty meeting the world head-on.