It always felt like my emotions were my weakness. Logically, intellect was a means to rise above these fleeting emotions. Until marriage, I managed to avoid engaging in overly emotional scenarios. But it got trickier once my toddler started developing “big feelings”. I was not ready to properly process my own emotions yet, let alone teach a person to read their own feelings.
How do we read these "feelings?"
From sifting through many hacks and tricks to handle toddler outbursts, I understood there was a method to the madness. It was more than noticing and naming the feelings. It wasn’t even about expressing or communicating them.
And here’s the catch - We don’t read feelings. We feel them - under our skin, deep inside our bones, within our very soul. Whether it’s our own or another person’s feelings, we feel them – deeply and intensely. Such is the power of empathy inbuilt in humans.
What should we do with these "feelings?"
We would like it if we only had to feel the good feelings and could avoid the bad ones altogether. This has caught on with the trends. Many “woke” influencers are asking to “normalise” the uncomfortable parts of ourselves and choose to “walk out” on the uncomfortable parts of others. The hypocrisy of this mantra is that we seek to feel included by excluding other people. But we can never truly accept ourselves by excluding others – simply because we are built like mirrors.
Personally, I wished my feelings wouldn’t burden others. From intellectualising, tracing cause and effect, and chasing control to minimise my burdensome feelings, I tried a lot of things. It worked, for a while. Then it got tiresome. By then, I was already in my 30s and face to face with a mini-me. My old methods wouldn’t work with my daughter. It was time to reinvent this wheel.
When it came to other’s feelings, I wished there was a manual to human emotions. And indeed, there was! It showed in the eyes, moments before the tears flowed. It showed in a lip quiver, a nanosecond before anger took over. It lay in the hopeful gaze quickly veiled by the fear of being vulnerable. It was felt in the final squeeze before the hug ended.
Should we really dwell upon these “feelings?”
I read somewhere that an actual feeling only lasts for about 90 seconds. Anything beyond that is our brain recalling and replaying the scene. For something as fleeting as that, should we really devote so much time andattention in our lives?
Very often, our hormones, internal and external stimuli and even the food we eat may dictate these feelings. So then, do these feelings even belong to us?
Why do we need such unreasonable extremes of pain and pleasure that’s mostly just felt outside the physical realm?
Precisely because it is an out of this world experience - It signifies the presence of something intangible, something more than what can be seen or heard or touched. Something that works only with a higher form of consciousness. Something that reminds us that we are not of this plane. Something that tells us there is more to life. Something that guides us to a higher goal – a purpose.
A transcending theme in folk and spiritual lore tells us of returning to the source, of remembering our origins and aligning with our purpose. Perhaps that is where our emotions lead us. Intellect is but a layer over it to connect the dots, to trace the patterns that otherwise appear to be random.
In simpler terms, it’s what drives us to do good expecting nothing in return, to do the right thing even when it’s hard, to choose compassion, to choose to be human. 
Feelings in the Family
It's not the emotion itself that we dread, but the hurt that it leaves behind. More so, when it comes from our family. Family is where feelings often become the most explosive. In a group of people deeply intertwined and invested in each other’s lives and deeply affected by it, it’s only natural for situations to escalate and lead to a tug of war driven by a range of emotions, unless anchored strongly to a sense of commitment and belongingness. The traditions and routines inherited from our forefathers ensured that the family was insulated from such turbulence.
In the age of nuclear units and found families, the generational anchors and hierarchies have been broken. We live in a world where we can be anything yet struggle to bring sync into our marriages. I have gone through many days where I would be the protagonist whose feelings are dismissed or the antagonist who snuffed out my husband's energy. Every instance had its valid reasons but the result was the same – we were struggling to find peace and balance. And worse was our pain of not being understood for how we felt, even by our own life partner.
While we can choose many ways to anchor ourselves to manage these moments of disconnect, there is one method that was particularly effective for me.
Never stop smiling at the Rainbow!
Imagine, you see a rainbow. It’s beautiful and it makes you happy. You can’t help but smile.
Now imagine there is a person facing away from the rainbow.
This person cannot see the rainbow nor understand why you are smiling. They proceed to call your smile unreasonable or inappropriate.
At this moment, you have a choice. You can stop smiling because of their comment and blame them for the loss of your joy. Or you could keep your smile and eventually, their curiosity would make them turn to the rainbow and share your joy as well.
Ultimately, we all want to feel happy. The happiness we feel is contagious. If we let it be dulled because someone doesn’t see your rainbow, you kill the joy in both your lives. But if you keep your smile alive for the simple joys in life, you open the door to bringing that joy into the lives of more people.
Now you may ask, what if this person does not appreciate the rainbow? That’s where your feelings elevate the situation. That’s when empathy lets you see and feel that this person has been hurt in a way that they have steeled themselves to the beauty of this world. Stay consistent in your appreciation for the creations in this world, entertaining the possibility that you might just be the instrument to reveal this beauty to this person for the first time.
Finding our Rainbow!
We may be overly ambitious in our desire to conquer our emotions when we can hardly understand or direct our basic life-sustaining processes like digestion and breathing.
However, in every moment of turmoil, when I hug my daughter, caress her and tell her I’m here for her, everything else feels manageable. The emotions pass without causing more damage. Perhaps this is what we all need.
Perhaps this is what we should dole out generously. Perhaps, that little moment is the promise of a lifetime we seek in marriage. And it can start with us, from us.
So, let’s keep smiling at the rainbows in our lives, our family being one of the brightest. It’s a place where we belong, a place where we take root and a place we return to while on this sojourn of our human existence.
Chinnu George
