Feelings

 

FEELINGS

Ever heard of this word? Course you must’ve. This is the one word which is used in almost every possible sense when it comes to the phenomenon of emotional perception; “How are you feeling today?”, “Do you have any feelings?”, and most of all in the romantic sense “Do you have any feelings for me?” (Though to be honest, that line sounds super lame to me).

I for myself don’t know what it is that drives relationships. It’s like this cycle; you interact, navigate your emotional landscape, make a judgement on the basis of your analysis, and finally decide what course of action to take. What usually happens is that very course of action leads to disaster more often than not. I simply don’t see the point, of trying to find someone when deep down, you know that this endeavour of yours is going to consume a major portion of your life, which could have been fruitful in other ways….

But here’s another question which rises in my mind….

What Is Fruitful?

This is kind of a tricky question… because most people have different notions of fruitful. Then there are many whose notions change due to the influences around them. I am one of those who come into the latter category. My notions of fruitful were proper studying and devoting proper time to studies. Now, I have included some other activities in the criteria for fruitfulness, some of them being rather out of the box. Fruitful activities, in short, vary from individual to individual. What might be fruitful for one might be a waste of precious time for the other. That’s why it’s a matter of one’s own self what he should do with his time each day.

Back to the main topic though; being involved in this feeling cycle consumes a lot of a person’s time; some may find this fun and might enjoy indulging in this, while others may feel trapped in this “vicious cycle”. This is what I mean when I say that feelings are a subjective thing. Some like it, some feel trapped in those, some don’t even want to get into those. It’s a big mess, really.

But people still end up winding themselves into this huge spiral of emotions, and often find themselves at the bitter end of the spiral. Now, that’s not to say the spiral is destined to unwind in only one direction; it’s both ways. We might also find happiness at the end of it, but then there is the question: are we really happy because of what we found? Or is this “happiness”, in reality, just a temporary source of alleviation which we have been searching in others for so long? To be frank, I am a believer of the fact that what we are finding in others is present inside us at every step of the way. It’s only you who knows what you want, and only you who can understand how you can achieve it. It’s only when you discover what you have been wanting your entire life is inside you, that you can be comfortable with other people. You can say that... you are ‘content’, with how your life has turned out to be.

Sure enough, feelings are not an easy thing to discern. But why is it that people go into any kind of relationship, knowing that their very own feelings are going to get hurt at one point or another? To be honest, I don’t know the answer myself. But what I do know, from my personal observation, is that people do it otherwise, because they have hope; and they think that there will be something better for them at the end of it, or they will derive something valuable out of it. It sometimes even comes true; you wind up feeling satisfied and content; sometimes it does not: you end up feeling disappointed, hurt, what not. But that’s the thing: it doesn’t make us stop. We still try it again, hoping for a different outcome each time. It’s like we have this optimistic side to us, this hope, that the same action we perform will someday lead to a different outcome. Some people are earnest believers of this stream of philosophy; others have merely given up, taken to live a life disconnected from people around them, not trying to indulge in the humanity around them, the so-called ‘nihilists’. Now, it’s not wrong to practise different philosophies; it’s after all our right to judge what is good for us and what is not. Some people find the idea of nihilism to be particularly comforting in accordance with their situation. Some don’t gel well with the idea, believing there is more to the world out there than being inside; all isolated and catatonic.

If I continue writing on this topic, I am sure to fill out a lot of pages, for there has been a lot of research done on this topic before the time this article of mine is going to be published. So I would like to end by saying that feelings are a subjective phenomenon, which have defined how we take decisions from time to time, and they have made up an integral part of human evolution over the millennia, and I believe they will continue to play the same role for future generations to come.