The Fine Conspiracy

When they ask how you are, say, "Fine."  Say, "I'm fine, very fine, and you?"  They'll be fine, as fine as you, whether either or you actually is or not.  It is a conspiracy, you see.  The way we protect ourselves, it becomes the "fine conspiracy."  Even though each of us has a greater or lesser slice of the pain, and even if at the center of each person there is great emptiness and such fierce sadness, we never have to say so.  Instead, we say, "Fine.  Everything is very fine indeed."  The ones who betray the conspiracy, we call them crazy sometimes, or we avoid their honesty as though it were the plague.  If they do not say "fine," they will not be asked again, and if they have dared say the extent of their confusion or the depth of their hurt we must isolate them, making them answer sometimes to the name of "insane," if we need to.  Once we have made that occur it becomes a name they can never abandon, not even if they agree to be "fine."  They may agree and pretend right along with the rest of us, but having once said it was not so they can never be believed.  Telling some truths, you see, affects one's credibility.