I feel like sometimes this world ‘requires’ of you.  To show up, to smile, to be the life of the party. That somehow this requirement to be someone was set up as a costume but one no one notices or cares they are wearing it.  It is what’s required.  

I think about the question ‘how are you?’ often.  I have been asked this almost everyday for as long as I can remember by total strangers or people who know me best.  What a strangely intimate question this is. And what a hard thing to answer. My mind immediately burrows through rabbit holes of dirt, trying to make sense of this question inside myself; to understand how my heart truly does feel; to wonder what would happen if I was entirely honest with this cashier at Target.  

We’ve turned a simple question of ‘how are you’ into a requirement.  A question mark subtracted, a fill-the-void three words. As though the person themselves is unnoticeable, untouchable; yet with this single question, all barriers are simultaneously broken down and put back up again.  

No one seems to notice a split in someone’s face.  A fallen crown. A bleeding heart. It’s just too uncomfortable. 

But I know one thing that never grows uncomfortable by the murkiness. Being seen by him creates a new crown, one that sits atop your head as perfectly as your hair. Being seen does something new to your soul, something that has always been there yet is usually not accessed. Being seen is a child watching a rainbow for the first time.