Why We Sometimes Don’t Feel In The Moment

life is full of moments where we are
meant to feel certain things the demand
starts in early childhood it’s our
birthday and we are meant to feel happy
or dad is going away for two weeks and
we should be feeling sad Oh our school
has won at team sports and we should
want to join in a celebratory song
adulthood continues with this sort of
injunction we should feel devastated at
funerals touched and hopeful at weddings
infused and moved by our families
carefree on holiday and when in bed with
someone we like exclusively focused on
the act in its pleasures but in truth
our thoughts and feelings are seldom
exactly in sync with outward events they
have tendencies to be vagabond
unfaithful or unruly we rarely feel
exactly what were meant to when we’re
meant to our emotions follow the script
of life with the lag and distortions of
a badly subtitle foreign film it can be
awkward but there are a host of good
reasons for this there’s a lot more
ambivalence in our hearts than we are
ever allowed to own up to in public we
may love certain people deeply but at
the same time Harbor profound and
understandable resentments and rage
against them no wonder we don’t always
cry as deeply as we should at funerals
also to get through life we need to grow
a tough hide we have to learn not to
feel and not to register certain things
that pass through consciousness those
among us who’ve suffered the most
especially at an early age have had to
grow Masters of the art of occasionally
not feeling no wonder then that when the
time comes for vulnerability and
openness we might not always so easily
be able to access our more tender
emotions happiness can be extremely
worrying to register we are creatures
who defend ourselves through anxiety and
cannot always readily give up our
vigilance simply because we have a few
days off work and there’s a line of palm
tree
ahead we may have grown suspicious of
large groups and fear their capacity for
intolerance and cruelty it may therefore
be tricky for us to join in in any
uncomplicated way with communal cheering
and celebration we may have some
well-founded background resentments
against collective demands finally our
emotions tend to move far more slowly
than do events in the outer world the
so-called right feelings may well show
up but rather later than one might
expect we do eventually feel grateful at
the way the holiday went but perhaps
three months after we’ve returned we do
register that we are in love or
devastated or in mourning or scared but
not as soon as the world outside us
might like the inner clock has its own
rhythms and seasons that won’t easily
obey the outer calendar ultimately we
often aren’t in the moment because we
have the wrong map of what should be
thought normal at any given moment
it’s our expectations rather than our
emotions that are at fault to help
ourselves we should create a culture
which better accommodates the weirder
truths of the way we work that doesn’t
have such a strong script about what
should be felt and where we’re more
ready to accept the greater complexities
of our minds a lover who isn’t always
there in the act might return if they
aren’t pressure to do so to actively
someone who isn’t happy on holiday micro
a little more so if we don’t demand that
they smile all the time someone who
isn’t delighted at a wedding anniversary
could eventually celebrate if they were
first allowed to be understandably a bit
sad as well we should have greater
respect for the way we’re built not
being able to be in the moment isn’t a
sign that we’re strange or defective but
rather that we have started to be
our wisdom display cards explore what it
really means to be wise and how we can
strive to become more enlightened in our everyday lives