Writing Wellness 101: "One Question; Six Answers"

Is this a session about good writing? Or is it about writing well? Or perhaps about a career writing articles about health? No, no, and no! None of the above! This session is about the process of writing as a proactive strategy toward your improved health and wellness.

Today I want to reflect on the many times—and ways—in a given day we may be asked “How are you?” In different circumstances, and from different people, this simple question can mean many different things AND you will be motivated to respond differently. I can think of at least six different circumstances where the basic question is the same. (You may be able to think of more.) Even though the question is the same, you will respond differently each time.
1. You meet an acquaintance in the post office and she asks “How are you?”
2. Before or after a meeting, a colleague asks, “So how is everything going for you?
3. On a phone call from a parent or sibling, after five or ten minutes of catching up on recent events, your mother/father/sister/brother/aunt/cousin asks “And how are you doing?”
4. After dinner and a discussion about sharing household chores, your partner may ask, “How are you doing with all that’s going on these days?”
5. Your best friend in another city emails you about some tough times with a parent and then asks, “Now tell me what’s going on in your life!”
6. You are wide awake—again—between 2 a.m and 3 a.m. You tip-toe out to the kitchen for a cup of chamomile tea and pull out your journal. “So,” you say to yourself, “What’s going on that I can’t sleep?”

“How are you?” is a question with many meanings! We all know that sometimes it is just a simple greeting, more like a statement of “It’s good to see you!” than a real question inviting a real answer. People saying “How are you?” in the post office rarely expect an answer that describes how you are in any more detail than one or two words, “Fine,” “Not bad,” “Very well, thank you,” or “Great!” followed by a reciprocal question asking, “and how are you?” But beyond this superficial type of “How are you?” there is an opportunity in every other question for a wellness comment. And your journal is a terrific place to practice this kind of honesty about how you really, really are. At least three levels of writing wellness apply here. One is that writing honestly about emotionally difficult topics has proven to be good for your health. And the second is that this kind of writing may help you speak up (in a constructive way) about issues that are troubling you, small or large. A third benefit is that you may come up with solutions, alternatives, options, resolutions, new perspectives, and or forgiveness during your writing process, and any one of these also contributes to your overall wellness. For research summaries and bibliography on this topic, please access my website at www.metaphorical-ink.com and select the “Research on Writing” button.

For your writing:
For each “How are you?” in situations numbers two through six above write a one page answer that mentions some real and true answers to the question and real and true reasons why you are doing well or not doing well. For each situation, your wellness statements may be different because different issues will seem appropriate for discussion with a colleague, family member, friend, partner, or in the privacy of your journal. If situations two through six do not fit your lifestyle, first come up with five situations where someone might ask you a version of “How are you?” and then continue with writing a one-page answer for each.

Quotation for Percolation:
The world can only be as sane and healthy as the individuals living in it. If we want to live in a balanced environment, we must find and heal what is out of balance with ourselves.
Mahatma Gandhi

Reflection Excursions ™

Let’s take a trip. Let’s set off on a journey. Let’s pack lighter this time, set out earlier, and travel longer. My husband gave me two new travel journals for Christmas and I long to select a pen and direction and begin moving and writing. For me the journey and the journal begin at the first hint of the road. When the car is packed, the door is locked, the mail and newspaper suspended, our feet leave the ground and the journey begins. If the first setting isn’t Route 80 East or West, and it isn’t the bus station on North Atherton, it must be the University Park airport. Our airport is so small and easily accessible that I hope to achieve my lifetime quota of courtesy airport pick-ups and drop-offs right here. We can arrive with less than an hour before a flight and have time to check-in, browse the tiny café/convenience shop, pass through security, and read half of the latest Newsweek in the isolation ward, i.e. boarding lounge. AND I can begin my journal. Why not? Airports, bus stations even more so, and even Route 80 are rich experiences. If we had a train station here it would rank near the top for me in terms of experiential wealth! Just recalling the lives I’ve lived in and through Grand Central Station would fill a dozen notebooks! And the narratives, fortunately short, of being lost in Penn Station would resonate far and wide. These are all liminal spaces where lives are in flux. The outward signs of dramatic transitions, momentous change, minute developments, slight shifts, sorrowful partings, joyous reunions, palpable doubt, painful hesitation, determined courses, and heavy-footed routine flow through these spaces. And that’s not to mention undercurrents. The workers in these spaces are often invisible vectors just slightly below consciousness, even when we approach on the opposite sides of the glass at the ticket window. And even deeper beneath or behind yet another scrim are those who take refuge in the corners, stairwells, hallways, and empty platforms. They inhabit the shadowy places in the stations and in our consciousness, even when they approach us.

My travel journal will begin in this liminal space between here and there, a place that is a destination only to those employed on the premises. I’ve written about the seating in airports in Italy, about dignified garbage collection in Philadelphia, about waiting and waiting and waiting in Rome. I was fascinated by the staccato of metal cards clicking on the huge, old fashioned departure boards at the Keleti Station in Budapest on a very hot day in July. Our misadventures at Heathrow airport in London and at Guarulhos (GRU) in São Paulo have been duly noted for after-the-fact amusement. No, I lied; Grand Central Station IS a destination space for me. I try to visit this monumental space when I’m in NYC to feel all of the kinetic energy on at least three levels and in four or five dimensions. I feel more alive there, vibrating at a different frequency, alert and poised for action.

For Your Writing:
Why not? Go to a station or airport in your city or town. Pack light: just a pen and notebook. What do you see, hear, smell, feel? Write about the surface first and then observe the same scene looking at what’s not obvious the first time. It’s ok to imagine why someone is lingering at the café or why someone is running through the terminal. Pick one facet from your observation of this space and ask yourself what it means. For example, what does it mean that many airports have become like shopping malls? What does that say about our lives? How do you feel about shopping in airports? OR observe people waiting. What occupies them while waiting? What occupies you? What is “good” waiting vs. “not-so-good” waiting? Do people change when they travel? Do you?

Quotation for Percolation :
“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves.” Pico Iyer