“You say ‘Bed time, bed time, bed time’. That’s not what the child hears. What the child hears is: ‘Lie down in the dark, for hours, don’t move. I’m locking the door now’.”

Dylan Moran in “Like Totally”

When I come home from university for the holidays, my father always asks “Was the train full?” and I answer “I wouldn’t know, I only sat in one cart and slept half of the time”. People ask “How are you doing?” and I need to remind myself that this is not actually a question. I am supposed to say great-thank-you-how-about-your-self. Even if I am really feeling quite concerned, nauseous, weird, and panicked. Nobody wants to hear that. They want the assurance that everything is going fine and they can continue as they were.

And this is something science and higher education cannot afford. We cannot say that, yes everything is fine with the state of HIV today, just to make ourselves feel comfortable or not to create confrontations. We cannot say the education is doing just fine and we are okay to continue as we were.

When did bed time turn into something to look forward to? When do we stop thinking of how I am actually doing now, and just say yes the train was full? When did being comfortable become more important, than being happy or inspired or dead tired after achieving something. Nothing great came from comfortable apart from peaceful death. Let’s take pride in what we do, however messy it might be and how uncomfortable we might be during or after. Let’s be that kid in class who asks just one more difficult question two minutes before class ends, let’s be that child who refuses to leave the mud puddle, because there are so many interesting treasures to be felt and tasted in it.

And don’t ask me how I am, if you don’t really want to know.