At some point we all agreed to this weird social contract where the correct answer to “How are you?” is “Good,” even if your life currently feels like a browser with 37 tabs open and one of them is screaming.

Nobody wants the real answer.

 You could say, “I’m barely holding it together and I don’t know why my left eye keeps twitching,” and they’d still reply, “Nice! Anyway—”

So we smile.

 We say “busy” like it’s a personality trait.

 We add words like grateful and blessed to sentences that are clearly doing a lot of emotional heavy lifting.

The problem isn’t that people are lying.

 It’s that everyone’s lying at the same time.

 Which means we’re all walking around thinking we’re the only ones struggling while surrounded by people who are also struggling but pretending not to.

That’s why burnout doesn’t look dramatic.

 It looks like forgetting what day it is.

 It looks like staring at the fridge even though you’re not hungry.

 It looks like being tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix.

The wild part?

 The moment someone finally says, “Honestly? I’m not great,” the room exhales.

 Because permission is contagious.

So maybe the bravest thing you can do today isn’t pushing harder or staying positive or pretending you’ve got it all handled.

 Maybe it’s just answering honestly,

 even if the answer is messy.