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“NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR SHOWING YOUR FEELINGS. WHEN YOU DO, YOU ARE APOLOGIZING FOR THE TRUTH.”

                                                                                                        -JOSE N. HARRIS

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All my life I was under the illusion that there is a world without suffering. There are people out there who have no suffering and they are the ones who are living the life that I am striving to reach. Whenever I encountered suffering or emotional pain, I always thought about how do we not repeat this? How do we not experience all of this again? How do we not encounter this in the first place? How do we always be in a happy go-lucky mode?

I wish for every one of us to develop a mindset where we endure everything with grace, where we experience everything, feel it all, live it all, do it all, and not just chase highs but revel in the lows as well because, only then the high matters. 

It took me a while to develop this mindset.  I mentioned above that it mattered to me how I felt but I’ve realized this only in my 4th year of engineering. I went through it all which finally led me to this conclusion that it should matter to me how I feel and I need to take active steps for it. This is the primary reason for writing this blog so that people who are reading this right now, from different age groups, from different backgrounds can take charge of their emotions and be at peace with it and so do I. 

In 9th Grade, our school was planning on taking us on a trip to Bandhavgarh. It is a national park which is known for its tigers. That year though, my parents were already busy with many responsibilities that they couldn’t let go of. They already had a lot of liabilities and they did not want one more at that time, the liability of me going out for 8 long days; no matter how safe it was there’s always a concern until your child returns home safely. I was aware of the situation and wanted to be an asset to them rather than a liability but in the back of my mind, the fear of missing out on one of the best trips from our school and not spending quality time with my friendswas haunting me. My parents were sensitive to my feelings and I did go on the trip.

The first 2 days of the trip I was engulfed in negative thought. Was this the right decision? Am I being selfish? Will I regret this? The feeling of guilt consumed me and did not let me experience the situation I was in. My mind was oscillating between the past decisions I have taken and its future implications.

This was just one of the many examples where I couldn’t take charge of the emotions I was going through. This is a classic example where my mind was constantly juggling between two thoughts, one where I had to let go of the trip and the other where I wanted to go for the trip but there was a feeling of guilt and shame. When I went, these feelings took a while to reduce it’s intensity because I couldn’t eliminate them.

The point being, the inability of taking charge of our emotions leads to the inability of taking decisions which then causes guilt that makes our mind juggle between the past and future. All this kept me away from the present! I did not have the fulfillment of doing something, the satisfaction, the feeling of wholesomeness at the end of it.

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It simply boiled down to one question for me, “ Do I care about how I feel?”

The point of all this is that we need to feel it all, but sometimes from the perspective of our own good, for having the privilege of being in control of our happiness and sorrows, to be able to create situations of happiness and sorrows for ourselves rather than the other way around. It is about being vulnerable at times and not always putting out a brave picture, it is about having our opinions and staying put with it, it is about being mindful of everything that we do.

I am writing this because,

I want to feel everything, but I want to choose what I feel! It’s about being in charge of our emotions. It’s also just not about being in charge but also owning up to those emotions. I am trying to explore what the process should be for the same. I want to get into this transition of controlling what I do. Also, there is a doubt that, does this even exist?

Does control of emotions exist in reality?