FEELINGS

Is it OK to feel? We may have been taught to suppress or deny our feelings. Or perhaps our feelings have gotten us into difficult or confusing situations. So we ask ourselves: can we really trust our feelings— isn't it better to not feel so much? And we may wander through our days keeping a firm lid on our feeling nature. But while denying our feelings may keep us from being sensitive to life's pains and sorrows, it also keeps us from being sensitive and open to the joy and beauty of this life. Oscar Wilde once said, "As for living, our servants can do that for us." And George Bernard Shaw said of a deceased acquaintance, "He died at 30 and was buried at 60." To cut ourselves off from our feeling nature is indeed a living death. So let's be willing to feel our feelings even though they are sometimes painful, because our feelings give meaning and joy and beauty and love to our life. As e.e. cummings wrote, "I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing / than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance." Let yourself feel the joy of this life.