How are you? Most of us know the expected answer. We offer it quickly, often before we have asked ourselves the same question.
Happiness is not always a bright, permanent state. It can sit beside tiredness, duty, grief, uncertainty and love. A life can look complete from the outside while still holding an unnamed longing.
Perhaps the honest question is not whether we are happy all the time. Perhaps it is whether our days contain enough of what makes us feel alive — and whether we feel safe enough to notice what is missing.
There is no correct answer here. Only the one that becomes possible when somebody asks, then stays long enough to listen.