In any case, it was kind of you to share in
my distress. –Philippians 4:14
“Dad!
Come here!” This exclamation is becoming
increasingly a part of our household lexicon as my 11 year old discovers more
and more fascinating things to see on TV.
I should feel honored that he wants me to join him and share in the
experience, but it often interrupts more noble tasks which have my attention at
the moment. A recent “Dad! Come here!”
pulled me from the kitchen to the living room.
My son’s channel surfing helped him come across Red Bull Cliff
Diving. Yes, supper would have to wait.
Here’s
the imperfect summary. Competitive divers travel to exotic locations to jump
into water from about 90 feet above; best score wins. Some of the athletes look
rather beaten up because they hit the water hard—9.8 meters/sec/sec works out
to around 65 mph—the telltale kinesiology tape holding their shoulders, knees
or backs together for one more dive.
It
was fascinating. It was hard for us to
determine what a good dive was and what wasn’t.
We just watched and followed the cues of the announcers’ ooh’s and ah’s
accompanying artists at work.
I
noticed something else. Safety swimmers
waited down below. Each time a diver hit
the water, 2 swimmers went out to him.
The diver would give each of them the OK sign with both hands (4 OK’s in
total) before the swimmers would leave him alone, let him swim to shore on his
own to make another solitary climb to a perch 10 stories up, from which he
would leap again.
It
was a rule. No OK sign; no more diving; try
again on the next stop. They had to tell the safety swimmers they were OK.
“Are
you OK?” This is another question we
often use. Both cars move over to this
side after the fender-bender, and the divers will ask each other. Bump into someone harder than expected, and
you ask. 40 years ago this along with “How
many fingers am I holding up?” comprised the entirety of concussion protocol as
we knew it.
“Are
you OK?” is also often used in our conversations with people who are
suffering. It is also a query often met
with a polite, but less than honest affirmation. It can be another way to offer a little
comfort without all of that complicated obligation to commitment. It can be another get out of the room free
card. It has become one of those socially
acceptable questions fittingly answered with a socially acceptable response.
Greetings and salutations.
Long,
long ago, I met with a couple who had lost a baby. The hopes they’d poured into becoming parents
were shattered because of the miscarriage.
We cried together. They did a lot
of talking, and I did a lot of listening.
Then the young woman sought her pastor’s counsel, “Can I ask you
something?”
I
was already feeling a fair share of inadequacy.
Deep down I knew that my meeting with this hurting couple would require
more than polite kindness and a sweet prayer at the end. The soul requirement was coming. Besides, they were positioned between me and
my office door. I couldn’t run
away. So, I let her ask her question.
She
choked back her tears and asked, “Why does everybody I talk to want to know if
I’m OK?”
I
could also hear her contempt for the question and her weariness of having to
hear it too many times. My first
response was, “Oh.” It wasn’t the “oh”
that typically accompanied shock, surprise or discovery. It was heartbreak. That would have sufficed
as my best answer to her question, but I went on, “They have no idea what to say to you, no words to help
with what you’re going through, but they believe they have to say something. They mean well. They really want you to be OK, but they can’t
make that happen. If you tell them you’re
OK that might make them feel better.”
“But
I’m not OK.”
It’s
interesting to me that in some cultures the gesture we use as the OK sign is
used as a more vulgar expression. I’ll
just say sometimes OK is not OK, and you can Google the rest. Here was a young woman who was hurting. In her own experience she had hit the water
descending at a bone jarring 65 mph. She
didn’t jump voluntarily. And though she was emerging from the dark, churning sea of grief, she was “pretty far from OK”.
It was time to listen more.
We have asked, “Are you OK?”
with no expectation of having to endure an honest answer. We have asked as a
way to protect ourselves from the “not OK” lurking beneath the surface of
someone’s suffering. When people have
asked us, we have given them easy outs with our polite responses, and sometimes
it’s because we didn’t want to be confronted by our own stories again. Other times we have detected that they’re just
trying to be nice. The asking and the answering have been
convenient attempts at self preservation. But what if…
- What if we really wanted to know? Could we generate the will to ask someone, “Are you OK?” and then sit with them to hear them out as they answered? On most occasions, we will ask this question to one of our friends. If we have been investing in the relationship with that friend we might develop the good intuition that kicks in to inform us whether she is or is not OK. We might not finish each other’s sentences, but we know each other pretty well.
- What if we really answered honestly? “No, I’m not OK.” Those could be the magic words which send the pretenders running. OR they could be the way to let your friends know you are ready to tell them more.
