When Fine Becomes the Baseline | The Quiet War

I'm fine.

Probably the most overworked sentence in the English language.

Especially for men.

How are you doing?

Fine.

How's work?

Fine.

Everything good at home?

Yeah. Fine.

And most of the time, we're not lying.

That's the problem.

Fine doesn't mean good.

It means nothing is currently on fire.

You got out of bed. Went to work. Answered the emails. Solved somebody else's problem. Paid the bills. Came home. Took care of whatever needed taking care of there.

Maybe you laughed a few times.

Maybe you had a beer.

Maybe you sat outside for a while and finally got ten goddamn minutes where nobody needed anything from you.

Then you went to bed.

Successful day.

Do it again tomorrow.

There's nothing particularly wrong with that.

Until you realize you've been doing it for three years.

Somewhere along the way, fine became the baseline.

Not happy.

Not excited.

Not fulfilled.

Fine.

And because nothing is catastrophically wrong, you don't think you're allowed to complain.

There are people dealing with real shit.

Somebody lost their job.

Somebody's marriage is falling apart.

Somebody got a diagnosis they didn't want.

Somebody buried someone they loved.

Meanwhile, you've got a paycheck. A roof. Food in the refrigerator. People who care about you.

What the hell do you have to complain about?

So you don't.

You keep moving.

And that's where this shit gets sneaky.

Because we know what falling apart looks like.

At least we think we do.

It's not getting out of bed.

Missing work.

Drinking at nine in the morning.

Punching holes in walls.

Crying in the shower.

Whatever picture you've built in your head of a man who isn't doing okay.

But there's another version nobody talks about much.

He gets up.

He goes to work.

He's productive.

People depend on him.

He cracks jokes.

He gets shit done.

And he hasn't genuinely looked forward to much of anything in a long fucking time.

Nothing hurts enough to stop him.

Nothing feels good enough to wake him up.

He's fine.

And eventually fine starts feeling normal.

That's the dangerous part.

You adjust.

Humans are remarkably good at adjusting to shitty conditions.

Turn the temperature down one degree at a time and eventually you're standing in a freezing room telling everybody it's not that cold.

You forget there was another temperature.

I think men do that with themselves.

We don't necessarily notice when something disappears because it usually doesn't disappear all at once.

Interest goes first.

Then energy.

Then patience.

Things you used to enjoy start feeling like things you have to do.

People invite you somewhere and your first thought isn't whether you'd enjoy going.

It's how good it would feel if they canceled.

You stop making plans.

Stop calling people.

Stop doing the shit that used to make you feel like yourself.

Not because you're miserable.

You're just tired.

Busy.

Got a lot going on.

Next week maybe.

And next week becomes next month.

Next month becomes next year.

Still fine.

I don't think the answer is to analyze every bad day like there's something deeply wrong with you.

Sometimes work sucks.

Sometimes you're tired.

Sometimes you want everybody to leave you the hell alone.

That's called being alive.

But I do think it's worth occasionally asking a better question.

Not:

Am I okay?

The bar for okay is pretty fucking low.

Ask:

When was the last time I was genuinely excited about something?

When did you last lose track of time doing something you loved?

When did you last laugh hard enough that your stomach hurt?

When did you wake up looking forward to the day instead of immediately calculating what you had to get through?

When did you last feel like you instead of the guy responsible for keeping everything moving?

Maybe the answers are easy.

Good.

You're probably doing better than you think.

But if you have to sit there for a while trying to remember?

Pay attention to that.

It doesn't mean your life is bad.

It doesn't mean you're broken.

It doesn't mean you need to blow everything up and go find yourself on a fucking mountain somewhere.

It just means fine might have become your baseline.

And maybe it's been there long enough that you stopped noticing.

There's a whole lot of life between falling apart and actually living.

Don't spend all of it being fine.