Everyone wants you to know that they're fine.

Yep.

But we're not.

We're tired, annoyed, bored, frustrated, overworked, busy, overwhelmed, stressed, a little mad, a little sad, done dealing, and quite frankly, a little accepting of all of this.

So no, everyone is most definitely not fine.

Ever since my pre-teen days, my grandpa and I have had a joke with each other.

"How you doin', kiddo?" he'll ask when he sees me.

"Fine," I'll say plainly.

Only now, he says it with me: "How you doin', kiddo? — Fine."

He'll answer for me, as though I'm not there—as though he doesn't need me to be there because he already knows the answer. I'm fine.

It's a joke, really. He always chuckles after he does it. And I do too.

Of course, I'll always go on to tell him real information about my life. But it always starts from the same place—the fine place.

Why do we say that we're fine?

I have a few ideas.

One, could be just that—we are fine. We're good. Everything's okay. Business as usual. We don't elaborate because there is simply no need to elaborate. Fine covers it. All is well.

Two, we could be in passing. We're walking around campus, we pass by an old friend, an acquaintance, or a classmate.

"Hey! How are you?" they'll ask as our paths converge.

"Fine! How are you?" And you'll smile whether this is true or not, because it isn't clear whether you're going to stop and chat, you're headed to a class, they look like they're in a rush. And so simply put, fine is enough.

Three, things are in fact, better than fine—things are AWESOME!!! But it doesn't matter in context. You're buying some items from a grocery store and the person at the check-out asks how you are. You say fine, when in fact, things are going rather well! You've just aced a test, it's Friday, you're hanging with friends tonight. But none of this really matters in the context of your grocery store excursion. So you choose to leave it out.

Four, you're a millennial.

There are 72,038,421 (yes—I just randomly put my fingers on keys and added commas to come up with this number) things racing through your head at the exact moment that you are asked, "How are you?".

School, grades, essay, exam, graduation, calendar, interview, appointment, internship, job, friends, party, meeting, work, job, coffee, sleep, sleep?, relationship, dating, forever alone, family, being social, eating well, cooking, exercise, health, sports, fun things, travel, hobbies, reading, bills, five years from now, thirty years from now, life, life? Am I doing this right? Is this normal?

Am I even close to covering everything? Probably not.

These thoughts strike us like lightening bolts and race through our minds at inconceivable rates per minute. And we can't stop them. And that's what other generations don't understand—at least it seems that way sometimes.

I would argue that when we say we're fine, we have a mutual understanding with our friends and colleagues—maybe even those older than us who understand us—that fine is just sort of a role we play. It's how we're seen and expected to be.

We, the fines, understand and envelop the hidden meaning of the word. We're tired. We're stressed. We're thinking about stuff. This stuff is not necessarily organized in our minds, but it's there. It's all there. It balances out, and we're able to handle it... for the most part. Nonetheless, it's a constant force. It takes up a good chunk of our lives. And when we seem like we're not emotionally present, it's not necessarily because we're staring at our cellphones: it's because we're either thinking about this stuff, or falling asleep because we've spent so much time thinking about this stuff.

It seems like all we do, all day long, is receive input. Text message, after lecture, after lunch conversation, after gossip, after Facebook invite, after Instagram posts, after talking to a parent, after everything that happened yesterday, last week, last year.

But honestly, we're handling it. Barely, but yes.

It's kind of like, I'm not fine, but I'm working on it. And we are. Each day we wake up and put our feet on the floor, we're working on it. And it's not easy. And so we become more and more fine, because yes—that is sometimes the only word that can come close to describing the amount of stuff we face each day.

When we say we're fine, what we mean is I'm not really fine, but I'm doing the best I can.

The fines need to be forgiven and forgotten. But mostly understood. Being fine is just fine.

And truthfully, it's okay to be not fine, even when you say you are.