While writing this piece, I am super confused in my head! I precisely don’t know if I am thinking through the thoughts or feeling my emotions to express it in simple words that my audience can understand. If I dig deeper into the process then to my shocking surprise, I see my feelings flowing through language waiting to be released in this world. Not really for any approvals or need but to just feel expressed. It’s leaving with me a sense of rejuvenation, to be heard & peaceful. But more importantly, it’s leaving me with a meaning of living my truth.
To this day every decision of my life that was lead by my feelings was most unpredictable & yet relevant for me as a person. They however in no way aligned with what society expected me to do but it came across as my masterstroke which changed my life forever. The guilt over the years for not living up to the expectations of close family & friends still haunts me. I am still owning it up & waiting to move over a nicer feeling of pride that I did what I needed to at the right time & place. Participating in a choreography competition in college while you have been handed a report card that shows failed in 2 subjects to choosing to stop pursuing a career for which I spent 4 years studying it. The decision to choose a life partner that doesn’t fit in worldly landscapes to picking up the property next to a beach without passing it through the logic funnel. The list is just endless.
This courage to see the world through your own eyes wasn’t built in a day & somewhere is still in progress. Looking back at my life, I feel happy to have made those decisions that slowly built my character. A character that’s not better or less. It is just me & I choose to be proud of it. The journey of becoming me was brutally faced with unending competition, fierce professional perfection & societal needs to be successful. I finally decided to go in the world empowered with weapons of education, diplomacy & the art of communication and did come out successfully. However, it never explained the self-doubt, anxiety & confusion that seemed to prevail all this while. I tried to outsmart myself by not recognizing those feelings but failed at the game I plotted repeatedly. Someone has rightly said when you make fool of people, you are actually making fool of yourself.
I just knew something needed to be done but didn’t know what, till I started asking myself “how am I feeling”? This question magically plugged me to my internal GPS & triggered all possible explorations of where I might go. The self-doubt slowly began to fade away with clarity on the need to accept your being every day. Almost like a livein relationship with someone without making it official. There were days when I chose to disagree with the top boss in the corporate boardroom filled with peers since my opinion came from my bones & I knew it was just right for the team. I pat myself kudos for that day irrespective of whether the viewpoint was accepted or not. Then there are days I said yes to someone for an association in spite of getting a NO from my internal GPS. That day I tried keeping compassion by saying that to err is human. But never did I ignore my feelings again which gave me a preview to my mental health. Dealing though has never been a cakewalk but it indeed is worth its while. So the feeling is the new thinking for me. If it doesn’t feel right, it’s not for me! If it feels right, it’s my decision no matter what.
We are slaves of our emotions
I find this absolutely funny to be negotiating prices for veggies over the weekend in the local market & consider it as an achievement if I manage to save some cents on that. But what I find funnier than that is spending $5 for a pint of beer in a bar with a close friend which actually costs $1 if I would pick it up from the wine shop with NO sense of guilt. If the logical mind was the only way to think through decision making than how we justify this dichotomy. That’s why someone has rightly said:
Emotions lead to actions; Reasons Leads to conclusion
The feeling of spending time with someone you share your life with is in itself a profound experience. Logically it might be difficult to explain the extra spend but the feeling can just cut the confusion & say the experience that you are spending on is just priceless. Money becomes just a piece of paper with which you buy your happiness. Needless to mention the futile exercise of justifying spend to our minds with the theory of relativity from different examples is unending. And we do it without realizing that the easiest thing to do in this world is to make fool of yourself.
Balanced versus perfect life
Do you find your life like a clown in the circus? Almost like a Snooze or ON button. You press snooze & we are sleeping unaware & totally disconnected from the worldly affairs. You press ON & we start juggling balls named career, relationships, fitness, finances, or spiritual growth. We seem to be doing it effortlessly & look perfect. But then when I look at the health statistics world over for people suffering from depression, anxiety, obesity, cancer, heartaches & many more, I just go numb. I begin to feel a lot of lies in this whole truth that we experience as reality. This huge gap makes me question why are we doing so many transactions & for whom? I apologize if the word “transaction” didn’t go too well with you while you read this piece but that’s exactly how I see this as.
Balance is not something you find, it’s something that you create.
The key to finding a balance is to be in touch with your feelings. I remember going to a wedding of my friend who decided to run away just before the rituals were about to start. Yes, it did sound irresponsible to me in the first place but beneath within I was jealous for the guts my friend managed to gather & say no while sitting with the entire society who came over to bless him. Thankfully he is happily married with a kid to his wife whom he met in a dingy hostel of Madrid while traveling. When I asked him later about his horrible decision of embarrassing everyone at his wedding then he just said – “Somehow it didn’t feel right”
Conclusion
It’s not about how the world looks at us. But about how I look at myself. The feeling can be the guiding light to understanding oneself better & to establish a respectful relationship. The way I look at myself is how the world will look at me.
