Acceptance

Feelings are funny in the way they mean nothing and everything in the same breathe. Im writing about this as it seems to be the theme of the day and something I’ve been at war with for most of my life.

Feelings or emotions are incredibly important in that they share with us what we need or what we need to stay away from. Although this seems to make sense, and it does, it’s the fact that our feelings aren’t always rational and we aren’t always aware of it that is the issue.

I spent a vast majority of my few years on this planet feeling incredibly sorry for myself, the world is out to get me, all that stuff. Plenty of teenagers feel this, heck, plenty of people feel this. But this isn’t rational. The world was never out to get me, my experience in life was not inherently worse than the next person but for some reason I felt that. Now think of it this way, why am I so special as to receive my own unique kind of suffering. I’m not. Neither is anybody else. Suffering isn’t unique it may be interpreted differently, experienced differently but its all suffering just the same.

I think it’s important to stop trying to understand our emotions so much as to just witness them, see where the thought takes us. In that moment that you feel whatever feeling it is that scares you, it may feel awful to embrace it or go deeper but you have to remember its not going to swallow you up. The pit of feeling isn’t never ending.

What I mean is don’t think about your feelings analytically, don’t judge them or yourself for existing, observe the feelings. Observe them in their rawest purest form and let them guide you to their root. Instead of turning your head and ignoring them face them with grace and empathy, patiently allowing them to exist for their time to present whatever they need to. This is a gift, because it provides you with the opportunity to sit front row in observing what steps you need to take to better align yourself with your values.

You see I was reading ‘fuck your feelings’ an article by Mark Manson and he spoke about meta feelings. The feelings you have of your feelings, to put it lightly. His article explains how I feel about feelings probably more accurately than what I’m personally writing about how I feel about feelings. Anyway, meta feelings tell you what you feel about your feelings, so essentially telling you whether you think you should feel the way that you do, or not?

What I’m saying is, the awareness of personal values will allow you to observe your feelings, and meta feelings, to see whether or not your actions, which led to said feelings, were or weren’t in line with your values. This then allowing you to adjust the way you act or respond to more accurately align with your values. Learning is a beautiful thing.

The world gets a little more peaceful when you are in acceptance with letting yourself feel.

I’m not presenting this as a cure all method for feeling things. Pain still fucking hurts. But by taking the opportunity to gain something of value from it can help in being the person you aim to be, at least it has helped me a lot in my journey from irrational teenager to semi-rational sort-of-adult. It helped me stop letting my emotions take the wheel so much by creating the space to feel and then assess where that led me.

It feels uncomfortable, but don’t be frightened its only your brain. If you choose to observe curiously, with empathy and grace, you give yourself the kindest gift.

The opportunity to put your best foot forward.

Be kind to yourself. Peace and love!

-KJ