The Unutterable Joy of Okayness

Sounds boring. Feels amazing.

I’m okay.

That’s the recognition that came to me today.

Not all the time. Not perfectly.

But mostly, I’m okay.

It’s the greatest feeling I’ve known.

Seeking perfection.

Over the past decade or so, I’ve noticed I have (have always had) deep feelings of melancholy and anxiety and insecurity — about work, relationships, my basic self worth.

I’ve done a lot (maybe in some ways too much) to try and address, and “fix,” those feelings.

I’ve read countless books, listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts, done an enormous amount of therapy, written voluminous journal entries.

When I started on this journey, I didn’t articulate a clear goal, but looking back, I think I had something like this in mind:

“Find out how to be healthy, happy, and confident. Study the people who are all those things, learn their techniques, and become an ideal version of yourself.”

I did the studying. I found a lot of sage and wise advice.

But the perfect version of me I imagined somehow never arrived.

So what have I been working toward?

It turns out “perfect” isn’t a great target to aim at.

First of all, nobody’s perfect (as this scene from Some Like it Hot so wonderfully reminds us).

But also, believing the goal to be permanent and idealized happiness and health is terribly demotivating. You might very occasionally feel like you’ve touched the edges of that ecstatic state, but mostly you just notice how infinitely far from it you are.

Even improvement itself — feeling a little bit better, most of the time — is a messy and imprecise process. I still backslide into utter misery at times, and it feels as if I’m back at the bottom of the mountain.

These days, though, I have to admit that my default state of mind is just better than it used to be.

I’ve shared this essay from Sasha Chapin before — “How I Attained Persistent Self-Love, or, I Demand Deep Okayness For Everyone” — but until recently I didn’t realize that I might have backed into actually finding something like his definition of deep okayness for myself.

Being okay is great.

“Okay” still doesn’t sound like a very sexy thing to be.

When you ask a friend “are you okay?” it’s never a positive question.

Okay is supposed to be the normal baseline for all of us. You’re okay until you’re not.

For me, though, I don’t think I’ve been okay for most of my life.

This is not to suggest that I’ve been miserable. Rather, I’d say I’ve been in a constant state of low-grade anxiety: always thinking about what I might be doing wrong, how other people perceive me, what trouble I could be in.

It’s not as if that has suddenly ceased. I still feel that way sometimes, but I noticed recently that it’s no longer my baseline state.

Instead, I’m kind of okay. Getting there was messy, staying there is uncertain, but when I notice that the ratio of “okay” to “definitely not okay” has shifted in my favour, I feel really happy.

Highly sensitive people.

My mum shared a great article with me recently about “highly sensitive people” — those who think deeply about everything and are hyper-attuned to the moods of others.

I’m pretty sure I’m one of those people. That sensitivity has often left me feeling like a person with no skin, exposed to the elements and somewhat defenseless.

Sensitivity like that can be wonderful. It can connect you to the magic of being alive, and the beauty of other people. But it’s also exhausting and overwhelming a lot of the time.

I don’t think I’m less sensitive than I used to be. Perhaps I am living in better relation to my sensitive parts, though. They don’t batter me about as much as they used to. I can recognize when I’m experiencing an excess of vulnerability and responsiveness, and as a result I am less flooded by it than I was before.

A waystation, not an end point.

I don’t expect to be okay forever. That’s one thing that stands out when I look back to the beginning of my quest for happiness: I used to see it as a time-bounded job with a clear endpoint.

If I read the right things, did the right therapies, exercised the right amount and in the right ways, ate well, etc., there would come a day when I was finished.

I would step out of the machine like Steve Rogers in the first Captain America movie, having transformed from a scrawny wimp into a muscular and invulnerable hero.

Now I know that there is no endpoint for this work. I will be stumbling through days and moments, sometimes encountering light and beauty and ease, sometimes huddling from terrible storms, until I stop breathing.

That’s also a good thing to remember and know.

If my original thesis was true, I’m not sure what I’d do with my new Chris Evans physique and emotional superpowers. Flex in the mirror? Fight the Red Skull?

Luckily, I’m as physically weak and as emotionally malleable as ever, which means I don’t know what’s going to happen next or how I’ll deal with it. Which means I’m alive, and at risk of unhappiness and pain.

But mostly… mostly okay.