by Priya Malhotra
Someone asked me recently how I was doing, and I said “Fine,” without thinking. Then I heard myself—how practiced, how precise. “Fine” is code. It’s short for: I’m tired, but I can’t afford to be. I’m grateful, but I’m lonely. I’m not drowning, but I’m not exactly swimming either.
The truth is, “fine” might be one of the most disingenuous words in the English language. Not because it’s a lie, necessarily, but because of everything it carefully conceals. It’s the duct tape of conversation—quick, convenient, silent about its own compromise. When we say we’re fine, what we often mean is: this isn’t the time or the place. Or: I don’t know how to say more without unraveling. Or even: I’ve said “fine” for so long that I’m not sure what’s underneath it anymore.
What’s astonishing is how socially sanctioned this word has become—how ubiquitous, how unquestioned. It has infiltrated emails, doctor’s offices, family dinners, therapy sessions, even the most intimate conversations. A partner asks how you are: “Fine.” A friend texts from a continent away: “Fine.” Your mother calls, her voice already brimming with unsaid things: “Fine.” It is at once an answer, a defense, and a diversion. We wear it like a laminated name tag: nothing to see here.
But “fine” is not a neutral word. It is a performance. And like all performances, it costs something.
Part of the power of “fine” lies in its plausible deniability. Unlike “great,” it doesn’t overpromise. Unlike “terrible,” it doesn’t beg follow-up. It hovers in the middle—a shrug in word form. Say it enough, and you can float through an entire life without anyone really looking at you too closely. Or worse, without anyone realizing that you needed them to. It is, in many ways, the perfect linguistic technology for a world uncomfortable with emotional mess.
I sometimes wonder when I first learned the word in this way. Not just its dictionary definition, but its psychological function. Perhaps it was in adolescence, when the body becomes unruly and language begins to carry risk. Or perhaps earlier, watching the adults around me deploy “fine” with such ease, such quiet choreography. The way my mother might say it after a long day, her eyes betraying the ache in her bones. The way my father might use it to end an argument without conceding ground. The way teachers, neighbors, bank tellers, and strangers on the bus all seemed to carry it like a passport—something that allowed them to move through the world without inspection.
It wasn’t just about avoiding truth. It was about avoiding exposure.
There is something uniquely contemporary about this relationship to “fine.” We live in an age of curated selves—Instagram-ready, optimized, resilient. Authenticity is prized, yes, but only the glossy kind. The kind that ends in a lesson. The kind that photographs well. The kind that says: I struggled, but now look at me thriving. Anything too raw, too unresolved, too unfixable, is quietly unwelcome. And so we moderate our disclosures. We wrap them in the cotton wool of disclaimers. We call them “rants” or “venting” or “oversharing” as if to apologize in advance. Or, more often, we simply don’t speak at all. We say “fine.”
Of course, “fine” doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. For some, it is a shield. For others, a cage. For many women—especially those navigating cultures that prize self-sacrifice, resilience, or silence—it becomes a lifelong role. Fine is how you respond when your child is melting down in the supermarket and you’re afraid someone will judge you. Fine is how you answer when your doctor dismisses your pain, when your coworker interrupts you, when your in-laws ask for yet another compromise. Fine is what you learn to say so that you don’t come across as too angry, too needy, too much.
But men say “fine,” too. Often with even fewer options. Because if emotional expression is dangerous for women, it is near-lethal for men—socially, that is. Vulnerability is still coded as feminine. Stoicism, the emotional straightjacket of patriarchy, leaves little room for anything but vague assertion. “Fine” becomes the only way to say, I’m unraveling without sounding weak. And so, generation after generation, boys become men who don’t cry, men who don’t open up, men who bleed internally while saying, again and again, that they’re fine.
What’s insidious is how contagious this culture of “fine” can be. When someone tells you they’re fine, you take it as a cue. You nod. You don’t push. You say you’re fine too. And so two people who might have connected—who might have offered each other something real—end up passing like ships in the fog, each imagining the other’s life is steadier, simpler, more intact. We mistake politeness for protection. We collude in each other’s isolation.
I don’t mean to suggest that we owe our truths to everyone. There is wisdom in boundaries. There are days when “fine” is not a betrayal but a necessity—a holding pattern, a promise to return to oneself later. But when “fine” becomes a default, when it calcifies into a habit, it erodes something essential. Our ability to be known.
And being known is not a luxury. It is a human need.
In recent years, I’ve tried to pay attention to how I use the word. I’ve noticed that I reach for it most when I’m in transition—between tasks, between roles, between selves. When I’m not yet sure how I feel, or when I’m trying to hold too many feelings at once. It’s a placeholder, like “um” or “you know,” except heavier, because it carries the weight of everything I’m not saying.
Sometimes I try alternatives. I say, “I’m okay, but it’s been a lot.” Or, “I’m hanging in.” Or even, “Today’s hard.” These aren’t dramatic confessions. They’re small cracks in the armor. But they make room—for breath, for honesty, for intimacy. And more often than not, the other person responds in kind. They exhale. They tell me something real. The conversation shifts from performance to presence.
That shift is everything. Because we are, all of us, walking around with stories behind our eyes. We are grieving and hoping, longing and coping, failing and trying again. We carry heartbreaks that have no name. We smile through migraines. We attend meetings with broken hearts. We carry trauma like an invisible second skin. And still we say “fine,” as if that tiny word could possibly hold the complexity of our lives.
But perhaps the most dangerous thing about “fine” is that it can fool even us. Say it enough, and you start to believe it. You forget what it feels like to check in with yourself. You lose fluency in your own emotional language. You start to measure wellness not by how you are, but by how well you appear. And then one day, you’re sitting in your car, or staring at the ceiling at 2 a.m., or scrolling through photos of people who seem much happier than you, and you realize: I’m not fine. I haven’t been for a long time.
That moment can be terrifying. But it can also be the beginning of something. Because once you allow the truth to surface—even just to yourself—you can start to tend to it. You can ask what you need. You can reach out. You can reenter your life not as an actor reciting lines, but as a person reclaiming voice.
There’s a line I once heard that stuck with me: The opposite of depression is expression. It struck me as simplistic at first, but the more I live, the more I believe it. Silence, especially the kind we inflict upon ourselves, is not neutral. It accumulates. It buries. And in time, it can become a form of exile.
So I’ve made a quiet pact with myself. To use “fine” less. To notice when I’m saying it, and why. To give myself permission to answer differently—even if clumsily, even if incompletely. To remember that I don’t have to perform being okay in order to deserve connection.
Because I don’t want to be fine. I want to be real. And I want to live in a world where that is not just allowed, but welcomed.
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