To live is to feel

A 1500-word manifesto in 3 parts

I.

There is this bright open space I sometimes stumble upon, when everything around me and in me is arising and buzzing and unfolding all at once. It’s the feeling of being drenched in aliveness, of being pressed right up close to reality. 

Moments like these, however, are rare. More often, I find myself leaning back from life: an unconscious, deeply-conditioned flinching away. I wake up and dive headfirst into a sea of Zoom meetings, emails, notifications. I pack my calendar with trips, events, get-togethers with friends. Any other white space gets filled up with screen time. 

For a long time, I believed this — that everyday life was incompatible with feeling deeply. I believed that in order to participate in the modern world, to be ambitious and successful, I had to leave myself and my emotions. Inner work was a luxury for when I had the space and time. 

Indeed, most people dismiss emotions in the context of everyday life, thinking that they are some ineffable, volatile thing to be held back. The majority of us were never taught how to navigate their complexity, and so they are avoided, suppressed, dismissed. 

But when we ignore our emotions, we ignore ourselves. Just as our sense of touch, taste, sight, etc guide us through the physical world, our sense of grief, anger, joy, etc are there for a reason. They our inner resources and guides, designed to help us survive and thrive within complexity. 

I would argue, in fact, that our collective avoidance and dismissal of emotions is the single biggest driver of the widespread and growing mental health crisis. We have lost touch with our purpose and our meaning because we have lost touch with ourselves. Emotions are the language of the soul. 

Unfortunately, “listening to our emotions” has acquired a deeply unglamorous reputation. In particular, feeling “negative” emotions like grief, anger, and fear is seen as an experience on par with getting your teeth pulled — necessary on some level, but painful and to be avoided if at all possible. 

And when we do “get our teeth pulled,” there is a pervading sense of shame that comes with it. An unspoken belief in modern times is that those who are suffering must somehow have deserved it or be deeply broken. It is “their fault” and they must “be fixed” by going to therapy. 

Even within the therapy and self-help industry—particularly so, in fact—feelings tend to be seen as inconveniences. We medicalize our anxiety, demonize our anger, and euthanize our depression. Fear is seen as something to be overcome or conquered rather than welcomed and honored. Grief is acceptable at times, in small and controlled amounts. 

Indeed, Western society has co-opted ancient traditions and Eastern spiritual approaches — from breathwork to Tibetan Buddhism to yoga — and forced them into the Western paradigm of hyper-individualism and shame-driven improvement.

We do breathwork to avoid feeling overwhelmed. We meditate to be more productive (and avoid feeling not good enough). We do yoga to get rid of our stress. For so many young people, myself included, our seemingly inexhaustible search for purpose and meaning is driven by a desire to avoid feeling uncertain and existentially confused. 

https://x.com/melodaysong/status/1735402344635089310

Rarely do we stop to wonder why these feelings keep coming up in the first place. Rarely do we appreciate or thank them for pointing us to the fact that something is hurting us, is not serving us. For many people, the kneejerk reaction is to figure out how to apply some patchwork of techniques and tools to resolve the flare-up as efficiently as possible, so they can go back to work. 

II. The answer is not a cabin in the woods.

A familiar story is spreading: You must retreat to find yourself. You must escape the demands of modern life. You must go away for several months into the mountains, the desert, or some foreign land to rediscover who you are.

Indeed, an entire industry has formed around the "mental health retreat" model —nature is being commodified, packaged, and sold back to us as a "cure" for the modern condition. We are told the story that we are not enough as we are, where we are. They promise that that missing thing, that final fix, is Out There.

The allure of this message is understandable. Many of us were raised in environments where our emotions, once so fluid as children, were admonished as “too much” or inconvenient. In schools, workplaces, and public spaces, there is an unspoken expectation to keep composure. Crying is seen as weakness, unbridled enthusiasm as immaturity. We are told to bottle it up, go to our rooms, go do it somewhere where you will not be seen, where you will not embarrass us.

No wonder we think that retreating is the answer. We have been conditioned that hiding ourselves away from life is the only safe place to allow our depths - to become whole again. 

Don’t get me wrong: There is nothing bad about taking space, slowing down, finding rest. I have attended many retreats that nourished me deeply and allowed me to reenter into the modern world with greater capacity, freedom, and fluidity.

But taken to its extreme, the fantasy of retreat is just another form of leaning back from reality. Eventually, we all must return to life. And when that happens, there is only one thing left to do.  

III. “Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror.”

To be drenched in aliveness, to be in the buzzing and unfolding, one must allow everything to happen. To deeply feel wonder, joy, and beauty, one must deeply feel anger, grief, and terror. 

There is no playing field more fruitful than modern life. So many experiences we deem as bad or wrong can transform into invitations to simply feel what is there, without judgment.

This task is simple, but not easy. One must be willing (and have the capacity) to hold intensity, the gumption to do so, and the unwavering belief that this is the only way to truly live. 

This capacity, like a muscle, can be built up over time and supplied by a well-trained coach, teacher, or therapist. For me the latter two, only developed after (1) prolonged, intense periods of suffering, and (2) discovering the exquisite joy that naturally unfolded when I allowed myself to simply feel. 

There are a few organizations I have come across who do this incredibly — next-generation therapeutic and coaching modalities that emphasize discovery over improvement: the Art of Accomplishment, Aletheia Coaching, Internal Family Systems. 

Their respective maps of this territory have been indispensable for me. And their philosophies, at their essence, are different expressions of the same tenet: Our emotions are sacred and wise, to be explored and welcomed rather than exploited, stamped out, or even intellectualized. 

With guidance from these teachers, I have learned to become intimate with my emotions, to set aside my desire to change or fix them, and to be with them with the wonder and reverence of a child.

And when I do that, whole worlds unfold.

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I have discovered, for example, that when I stop shaming the gray nothingness of my depression, it may tell me that it is actually cloaking a seething, frothing anger – a pacing tiger that has been told its entire life that it is destructive and terrifying and wrong. 

So then I sit with that angry, frothing tiger, a burning fire that rises from my gut into the crown of my head and clarifies everything in between. It is a wildfire of the soul, setting all that does not serve me ablaze, drawing an unmistakably clear line of what is mine and isn’t. Haku Zynkyoku: “A person of love is also a destroyer. This is absolutely the essence of the universe.” 

What will emerge from those ashes could be anything. Often, it is a deep and seemingly endless ocean of grief that rises in my throat, spreads through my chest, and breaks my heart open. l wade into that ocean, slowly and gently, feeling the waves lap at my ankles, my knees, my waist. I swim in it until my fingers raisin, until I realize that this ocean isn’t grief at all, but an all-consuming love. 

What I am trying to say is this: exquisite aliveness awaits in every minute, every moment, every place. It is there in the bland 2-hour Zoom meeting, at the height of Friday rush hour traffic, in the chaotic, stressful, mundanity of everyday life. 

It is there in you. You have always been part of this raucous, exploding symphony of things. You are woven into the very tapestry of a wild and unruly process that never stops.

All that is needed is persistence and curiosity. And one day you might look up and realize: Confusion is the essence of magic, terror is a form of sweet aliveness, and the void you’ve been fighting is pointing you home.