Lately when people ask “how are you?” if I choose to go beyond a socially-acceptable-yet-intensely-superficial “fine” or the ever-popular “tired” (which is a bit silly as I’m rarely all that tired) I run into… well I’m not exactly sure, but nothing approaching an answer. I’ll often twist the question and answer with what I’m doing, as if that somehow explains the how.

But anyway, how am I? I just can’t get away from the question. Today, I was reading a book which contained the phrase “It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it” and I was once again thrown back onto this. It’s what what I am, but how I am. How am I?

I quiet myself. I ask the question. There is nothing but emptiness, nothing at all.

A bit later there’s a moment of realization; what I mistook for nothing was in fact everything. The answer was, the answer is, the totality of right now. How am I?

Exactly like this.

But, how are you?