Bi-Emotional
Is Normal Confusion
“I am both happy and sad at the same time, and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be. ”
Human beings possess the most sophisticated minds in the history of the planet, and we have these complex minds because we live in a complex world.
Is it possible to keep it simplistic? Of course, it is. Except if simplicity were that manageable, the world's people would not be in a prevailing state of apprehension, fear, and anxiety all the time. Attaining happiness has become the new medium for a maximum percentage of people. Because they are ascertaining inner peace externally, of course, that will never fulfill them.
Yale University psychology professor Laurie Santos, who is directing a top-rated course on how to be happy, admitted it's possible for people to feel both positive and negative emotions at once.
"This is one of the reasons that most scientific scales for emotion include a separate dimension for positive emotion and negative emotion — they're not a continuum," Santos said.
Emotion Scale
Double emotions is not a 'smiling depression' where you are depressed and are masking pain on the outside. Merely rather than depending on the subject, you can feel both emotions. For example, on a smaller scale, parents are incredibly proud and genuinely happy when a teenager graduates from high school. Simultaneously they are deepened by sad feelings that their child grew up quickly and will be departing home to go to college. These mental states categorize as 'emotionally-rich circumstances.
I was fortunate to marry someone I fell in love with though simultaneously heartbroken to leave behind my family, friends, career, hometown, practically everything I was nurtured and sustained by for twenty-five years. Most relocation moves feel bitter-sweet.
Then there are more serious matters as a tragic death of a loved one. We are in terrible agony, yet a part of us is at sympathy that the unimaginable suffering the deceased was experiencing ended, and they are perceived to now be in a peaceful place (for those who believe in heaven).
I recently bought a home in the exact latitude and longitude I longed for nearly ten years. Are there moments where I still feel sadness? YES, of course. Does that mean I do not appreciate my new home or do not hold gratitude for it? NO, of course not. We base our current emotions on how safe we are feeling or how plentiful this happiness will last? At times we avalanche our fears out of anxiety and then feel sad based on the intensity and descend into a vicious cycle. How do we grow out?
By not deducting self-pity and aversion to focus on the sad feeling more than the happy feeling, that's how. No one is perfect. No one can because perfect itself is a six-letter word that holds infinite ideals and expectations only to strip proportions of the happy feelings. If we perceive feelings as small timed events with no other strings attached, we can feel safe, joy, and content. However, as long you begin computing emotional contingencies, it will crumble hard, and you will go tumbling down quicker than you realize what happened.
Ergo accept it. Accept that you carry both positive and negative emotions. Be it happy, sad, joy, fear, and understand that others experience likewise mixed feelings. There is truly no one that can execute you feeling happy or sad at the same time except yourself.
Understand Your Emotions
Ask yourself why you feel this way? There might be a lesson in the experience. Work through your emotions; don't push them away.
Sadness is often thought to be a sign that you need to step back, take stock, see where you've been, and know where you should be going. When one chapter in life is ending, and another is beginning, that can be a great idea. It doesn't take anything away from the joy and pride of the accomplishment.
Most of us begin to speculate about what will happen in this new chapter, and random thoughts come in. None of which occurred, and the probability of them happening is low. However, we get so suppressed in these nonexistent predicaments and torment our current happy mood.
If we but for a second stayed in the present moment and precisely appreciated where we are this very instant in time. A month later, a week, a day, heck, even an hour later would be irrelevant. And that would defy any sad or negative emotion welcoming to steal your current happy feeling.
When the time comes for it, and you do feel sad, that is okay too! Disappointment is a part of life. You cannot omit these predicaments, or you would hold no development, growth, and wisdom gained. Or even worse, no understanding or comparison to what appreciation, happiness, perseverance, strength, achievement, or self-love is.
*POINT A
You must learn and accept your current state of emotion without falsified implications, imagination and conditions.
Accept, Internalize, Feel and GROW.
*POINT B
You can be Happy and Grateful for all you have but still struggle and be confused af if you DO NOT FULLY ACCEPT being 'Happy' includes accepting times of disappointments, sadness, confusion, misery; all are stages of growth. Happiness cannot exist without sadness and struggles; otherwise, how would you know wtf Happiness is?
“It’s much easier to not know things sometimes. Things change and friends leave. And life doesn’t stop for anybody. I wanted to laugh. Or maybe get mad. Or maybe shrug at how strange everybody was, especially me. I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and than make the choice to share it with other people. You can’t just sit there and put everybody’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can’t. You have to do things. I’m going to do what I want to do. I’m going to be who I really am. And I’m going to figure out what that is. And we could all sit around and wonder and feel bad about each other and blame a lot of people for what they did or didn’t do or what they didn’t know. I don’t know. I guess there could always be someone to blame. It’s just different. Maybe it’s good to put things in perspective, but sometimes, I think that the only perspective is to really be there. Because it’s okay to feel things. I was really there. And that was enough to make me feel infinite. I feel infinite.”
Every person (family, friend, foe) and predicament in your life is a reason, a test, a growth causing emotions you understand or don't. In the end, it's you versus you. Stop basing your feelings on others' verbiage, actions, experiences, or lives. Base all the emotions on your own life. Where were you, and who were you? Where are you, and who are you now? Where do you want to be, and whom do you want to be? What did you learn? You were placed in this life only to gain knowledge of yourself through exponential growth. Be happy or sad, but don't be too sorry to be sad. This, too, shall pass. It always does, and it always will. Tomorrow isn't promised to anyone. Be happy to be here now and feel infinite.
To Growing & Feeling Infinite,