our feels

Long ago, a dear friend attempted suicide. Thankfully for all of us who know and love her, a miraculous intervention saved her life. While she was on the arduous path to recovery, she shared something that has been of service to me over the years, and I share it with you now:

“I made the mistake of thinking if I did everything right, I would be happy all the time. Now I know that part of being human is to be both miserable and joyful, sometimes on the same day, sometimes in the same ten minutes.”

Yes, all our feelings are just feelings. Sometimes they are essential bellwethers, and we should attend to them, especially if there are patterns or they make us sick. But. It’s good to remember how capricious and temporary they are so we don’t attach too much meaning to them. We get constructive feedback that feels like harsh criticism, and then a minute later, a different colleague drops an unsolicited thank you into our inbox. We get fired. We get the perfect job offer. We crash and burn on a presentation and then ace the very next one. Both the resulting hot flood of horror and the soothing warmth of contentment are just feelings, temporal and entirely mutable. Bored, entranced, embarrassed, thrilled, pooped (that’s a feeling!), disgusted, sad? The trick—the practice—is to deepen our capacity to stay sturdy in how we think and act in the face of those feelings. It’s only then that our little flawed human selves can change the world.

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