Time to talk about our feelings, let’s talk

So, if you are too tired to speak, sit next to me for I, too, am fluent in silence. – R. Arnold

Descartes said, ‘I think therefore I am’, some say, ‘You feel and that’s how you know you are alive’. So, whom should I believe? Whom should I trust? Should I move ahead in the monotonous race of my life from birth till death- constantly thinking, analyzing, deliberating and wondering but not feeling anything. Or should I dwell and ponder upon every feeling over which I stumble in my path? What should I do?

When I decide to put my feelings into words, a Pandora’s box appears in front of me out of thin air. I am curious, and I open the lid of the box with my feelings. And god! At that moment, a wrath is unleashed upon me where my childhood fears, my vulnerabilities, my phobias of opening up to someone and this bright, crazy light of healing comes in front of me. I feel afraid. I start to feel more sensitively, I begin to comprehend things in a much better and reasonable way. The darkness of my thoughts gets removed and I feel inspired. Inspired to live. To hope. To love. Myself and others around me.

Is that what happens when you open the windows of a room that has been closed for too long?

But I never remembered closing the windows of my heart, or what a more knowledgeable neuroscientist would say, the amygdale and pons region of my brain (responsible for controlling my emotions). Then, when did it happen?

Did it happen when I saw people close to me arguing and saying mean things to each other? Did it happen when I saw people crying their eyes out for someone who they have just met months ago? Did it happen when I saw a person lying cold when I talked to them over call a few days ago? When did it happen? Was I responsible for it alone? Such free will makes me feel guilty, in fact.

So to move away from such burden of emotions, I busied myself with tools in my hand, creating a gorgeous, Mughal-inspired design window for my soul, heart, amygdale or whatever. If I wanted to bar my emotions from coming out, at least, let me have my aesthetic pleasures.  So I did. I closed my heart from letting my emotions come out. But emotions are, I have seen, like tiny gusts of wind that can make their way to you through the tiniest creaks in windows and doors. And my beautifully created, Mughal-inspired window had tiny creaks from which these emotions came out in the forms of words, poems, stories and random thoughts – just the like the one I am putting right now.

However, hear me, you fellow emotionally-charged person (I believe you are because you have read this till here), that this time I am not trying to bury my emotions within some window or some pages or some poems. I am here to announce them, proclaim them and urge you to speak your feelings as well. Because after the Pandora’s box emptied itself, I saw one tiny thing still remaining inside. It didn’t throw itself upon me. Instead, it was stuck in a corner, waiting for someone to pick it up and acknowledge. And God! I had my luck this time. I did notice it. I took it out and saw it snuggled comfortably in my palm. A little, furry ball of light. Hope.

Hope is what we choose when we decide to talk about our feelings. We are afraid to talk about our feelings because we fear the wrath of those vulnerabilities, complexes and fears. But once we move past them, we see this beautiful entity called Hope. And this is what will matter the most when you talk about your feelings. Hope.

So, to my hopeful, emotional, and kind reader (since you have reached the end of this and I wish to impart some wise, sage-like words on you), I just have to say that the world is cruel, it’s gruesome with all its monsters. But with no choice, we just have this one. So, speak up your heart, let others do so and see if the world can become something comfortable to live in and live by.

Lastly, a couplet that you might resonate with once you open your Pandora’s box and accept yourself better –

Umr bhar ghalib yahi bhool karta raha,

Dhool chehre pe thi aur aayina saaf karta raha.

All my life, Ghalib, I did this mistake, I kept cleaning the mirror when the dust truly lay on my face – Mirza Ghalib