When I stand, I feel the Earth move beneath me. I don’t know how many kilometers in a second. But it’s there. I feel most things. Every changing wind. I get the news from a weather report. Below is a list of various feelings. It is not extensive.
Grief. Two grandparents, two uncles, two more grandparents on their way, one cousin, a friend, a woman who always showed up to my comedy shows even though we weren’t even related. There’s more to the list, but you get the idea. I didn’t have a particularly good time at school, socially, so let’s count my teenage years, too. Sure, it’s cliche, but maybe, as a culture, we’re not doing great? Anyways, grief always hits your vulnerable spot. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually. Or not. We may carry more than we expected.
Anger. I’m especially susceptible. And it comes in many forms. It’s important to direct it. Violence, no thanks, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit it’s not tempting at times. It’s nasty. The feeling itself has benefits. It can drive us to want to crush injustice. Stand up for ourselves. It’s also tricky, because it can come from the worst parts of us. It can come from the best parts of us. I blame Charles Dickens and high school English classes.
Pride. Surprising how many people don’t even know they’re contending for this one. Don’t worry, I’ve got it covered
Misery. They say it loves company. I suppose that’s true for some folks. I generally find it paired with isolation and a lack of company. We distance ourselves from each other and then wonder why we feel this way. Maybe we’re born with it. Maybe it’s misery.
Falafel. Not really a feeling, I just wanted some.
Hunger. Not about food. Desire might get close. It’s the combined feeling of both wanting and needing. With food, that’s easy enough. Take a trip to the closest restaurant, get delivery, cook something up (back to that soon). With relationships, it’s more complicated to identify the strangeness of being within yourself and between you and the person you want to be with, or are no longer with, or are with and want to continue being with. We hunger for connection with others. We didn’t know what meal is being served.
Time. I know it’s not really a feeling, but I feel it anyway. Fast, slow, out of order, out of focus, weirdly and with wings. Emotions are both fast and long. Thoughts seemingly take forever, unless I’m on stage, which frees them from their confines. No conversation ends until someone quits. And I mean emotionally bows out. Otherwise, it’s only pauses along the way, like steps in a river.
Depression. It comes in as many varieties as there are frozen yogurt flavors at the frozen yogurt place you were pressured into going to. I wound up with a combo of genetics and chronic pain. I’ll admit, it doesn’t taste great. Like peanut butter and stale gummy bears from the toppings bar. The other metaphor that comes to mind is vampirism. It sucks your life from you. What the hell kind of vampire does that to themself though? That’s where it breaks down. It’s where we break. A compound fracture of self.
Hold on. I have instructions.
Pause.
Breathe.
Think of what’s important to you.
Breathe again.
Good. Let’s continue.
Hospitality. The desire to welcome others, to provide. It’s why I love cooking and hosting people, why I’m perfectly fine with a job in the service industry. When we welcome others in, it’s a profound act. And the pedants will argue it’s not a feeling, but a practice. And they’ll be wrong. It’s a sense of openness and care. An antidote against depression. An anecdote (or several) against the same.
Joy. I might, in fact, argue with the pedants and nitpickers and say this is as much a practice as a feeling. It’s when your nephew, who’d never met you, reaches out to you before you can put down your bags. It’s ice cream and silence and laughter and a well-played baseball game and surprise at the world and its beauty.
Hope. There’s a reason parents name children things like Hope and Joy. It’s what they want for them. What they want for the future, maybe even of all humankind. And while we have seasons in our lives and, indeed, in our collective existence as humans, there’s no getting to the next new season without it.
Falafel. I’m still thinking about it.
Love. Supposedly, it makes us do stupid things. I think it makes us do smart things. Please refer to C.S. Lewis’s “The Four Loves” for additional context. And yes, you’ve been assigned homework. Love is hormonal, messy, complicated, harrowing, delighting, deep, big, common. I guess the Corinthians didn’t receive even close to a full list. It’s fundamental to who we are as people as social beings. Without it, we are assuredly boned.
Wonder. This one’s my favorite. It’s not knowing, it’s being wrong, it’s finding out, it’s being corrected. We’ll never fully know another person. But they can surprise us if we’re curious and willing to be surprised. Extrapolate that to the whole universe. It may be frustrating at times, not knowing. But the wondering itself is absolutely fantastic. How many? When? Who? Where? How? What? How are you? These can, if the stars are in the right place (and they are), the beginnings of wonder.
Again, this list is not extensive. These are not even close to the number of possible feelings one might experience. Fortify yourself. Wonder dictates we find out.
I constructed this list in a particular manner. The difficult feelings first, and the difficult feelings after the break. Every single one is a challenge itself. And they’re all jumbled up inside us like a Rubik’s cube that’s had the stickers peeled off and reattached in different places.