Once when I was 18 at Thanksgiving I was talking about how I always focused and thought about how I could try to always handle every situation in the best way possible. For example, if I had a conflict with my friend I would always think, what is the best, most responsible way to handle this situation and try to make every single action blameless. My sister also said, "Yeah that's what I do too!" or maybe it was the other way around.
Then my Dad said, "I think you are all crazy and need to just relax and not worry about stuff like that so much." Or something along those lines.
He was right.
I also now realize, that in conflicts, the most responsible thing to do is just say exactly how you feel, even if what you feel isn't the seemingly "best" and/or most justified thing to feel. (Another idea that is completely absurd to me, that we attach value judgments to emotions.) Part of being alive is to experience anger, frustration, jealousy, hatred, etc. There is no point in saying "I shouldn't be feeling this." Obviously you need to put constraints on your actions that you take when you feel those emotions lest you do something you regret, but, I feel that when you feel those emotions you should allow yourself to experience them and recognize why you feel them and take action to resolve it if necessary. If you seem to be overreacting to an insignificant situation though (which many people may say, "you shouldn't feel that way about this", it may indicate that there is something deeper going on that needs to be dealt with which is manifesting itself through the seemingly insignificant situation.
But it's foolish to say "it's bad to feel this" because those emotions aren't going to leave. Even if you try to control all of your feelings you will never eradicate the "bad" feelings because it's impossible. But I don't think there are "bad" feelings. There may be emotions which have a tendency to lead you to act rashly in ways you may later regret, but that doesn't mean those emotions are bad and should be avoided at all costs.
I don't know if this is making any sense.
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as a side note - i don't know how, but i generally see your blog posts minutes after they are posted. and sometimes that dissuades me from commenting because i don't want people to see what time you posted and then what time i commented and think that i just sit around all day waiting for you [or them] to post something. [sort of like when people answer the phone before you even hear it ring.... i automatically think to myself, "wow, they must be standing waiting for a call or something"...] but as i've learned, yet still struggle with accepting: people aren't thinking about it and even if they were - it shouldn't matter. at all.
ReplyDeleteon a more major note: this is true and so is the post preceding it.