Is it okay to FEEL everything, all at once?

People say self-control is the key to success, leading a happy disciplined life. It sounds reasonable but does self-control come that easy?

Have you ever struggled with temptation, addiction, procrastination, and motivation? I guess we all have at some point or the other.

We all know we are supposed to be in control of every aspect of our lives, from what we eat to what we do, say, buy and most importantly what and how we feel.

We feel at the mercy of our thoughts, emotions, and cravings, our lives controlled by impulses rather than conscious choices. But is it possible to be always in control of everything? Even the best-controlled people I have come across feel exhausted after a point of time in keeping it all together. We wonder was life supposed to be such a struggle?

Do you see yourself as a: TYPE A- a person who is capable of feeling everything and nourishing it or a TYPE B- a person who simply lays them off, as feelings might become a distraction in their life. Well I see myself at times, falling in between the A’s and B’s, maybe I am a TYPE C, the rare species.

I find myself in control of my feelings one moment, but there are other times when I just go with the flow of them, when feelings take over the greater part of me. That usually happens in the case of people who matter to me or things that I am too sensitive about like my career, relationships, family etc. I don’t follow a barter system when it comes to feeling for someone or something. I don’t expect people to feel the same amount of feelings for me as I feel for them but whatever you feel, feel it in the most purest and true form.

So I was reading some article a couple of days back and I came across these lines,
‘Cognitive empathy is understanding someone's thoughts and emotions, in a very rational, rather than emotional sense. Emotional empathy also known as emotional contagion, means 'catching' someone else's feelings, so that you literally feel them too.’ Can you relate to any of the part mentioned in the above lines?  Can you categorize yourself into any of these or do you find yourself being a part of both or maybe hanging somewhere in between? (Think for a while about this, and then proceed)

When you are capable of feeling everything so deeply you often carry deep compassion for all of humanity. You automatically become more aware of the nuances of one’s surroundings, and the world that exists beyond the physical.  You are more thoughtful, creative, conscientious, loyal, attentive, and deeply appreciative of the small things people do around you. It is like you are an artist who is keenly attuned to the art that surrounds him.

I see people, like a lot of people suffering from all kinds of mental sickness, shortcomings and insufficiencies that they try to overcome by reading books on self-growth, self- development, personality makeover and all the other psychological voodoo. Are these books really helpful? Well they might prove useful to some extent because they force you to think upon it and encourages you to put them into action (even I have recently started reading a few of them, let’s see what good it brings to me). These books might help bring a change or two in your personality and make you a better individual altogether but are they persistent enough?

Why do we feel the need to read these books? Why do we beat ourselves too hard at not being perfect? Is perfection, all that we crave for? (Ask yourself these questions for a minute and think if this is what you WANT? There is a huge difference between a NEED and a WANT.)

It’s good to read about things, people’s experiences of how they transformed, learn from what we see, read, experience and observe. Knowledge is good, and one should be conscious about everything that goes around. Deeper the ocean of knowledge, the deeper you are able to think and ultimately grow.

BUT, aren’t we all trying to turn our self into the perfect being by altering who we are and how we were born? Genetics play a huge role in our psychology, what we are today based on the values and principles that were taught to us during our growth. As we proceed in life, we encounter other beings that are better than us at handling life, so we try to imitate them, their techniques in total disregard to whether or not that will work for us. We humans have a very bad tendency of comparing our self with people who are superior to us. God invented humans keeping in mind that they are unique and distinctive from each other, but here we are trying to become one, what the dictionary defines the perfect being; being entirely without fault or defect.

A HSP (Highly sensitive person) sees his gift of sensitivity as a burden, weakness or flaw whereas an insensitive person finds it too hard anywhere to fit in. Why aren’t we satisfied with whom we are and see the good in every bit of us?

What’s wrong in feeling for a beggar whom we see on the street that is physically impaired? Imagine I go so deep that I start imagining their pain, what they have to go through everyday to be able to manage their everyday three-course meal. We sitting in our spacious and comfortable houses and rooms think of just nobody, and ourselves practically having no clue about what others might be going through right now to be able to survive.

I can go on writing about how I feel and see things in life, blabber a lot about my ideologies and beliefs but I want you to start feeling exactly what you want to feel. Don’t be afraid to feel, to be able to feel is a gift in itself that God has given you, cherish it and use it for the good of everyone.

This post will leave you with a lot of questions, instead of looking for the answers on Google try to question yourself, the answers will flow in. SELF- REALIZATION and INTROSPECTION, is what can motivate you to becoming a better person. (a better version of yourself and nobody else)

*Okay so before I pen down I suggest you to watch a movie named EQUALS: it’s a futuristic love story set in a time where emotions have been eradicated and a person who starts to feel is considered sick and harmful for the society with a SOS (switched on syndrome).

Even if, in such times two individuals can feel and fall in love why can’t we?