“It’s okay not to be okay.”
A sentence hit due to a Korean drama with the exact same wording. I do not know whether the world getting cruel or human just getting more sensitive seeing many inputs from the screen.
However, I couldn’t agree more. The sentence above teaches us about being vulnerable. Vulnerability in this post is simply referred to as a feeling when we let the negative emotions come to us. We don’t deny the frustrating and confusing – whatever you name it - situation. We receive it and we feel it. Some argue that we can let go of those uncomfortable condition only by feeling it.
I guess because of the increase of social media job, people start affirming that only laughter, joy, and a smiley face that are valid to them. In the lift of content, people most likely than not to see the product visible to their bare eyes. They don’t let the brain think about the creative process of every creator may spend. Still, in the midst of virtual personality, people curate their moments and life snippets just to show greatness and power. Of course, all of these narratives include me.
Cry, tear, anger, worry become less valuable in this "post-any-achievement-to-social-media" era. We tend to avoid those feelings and deny the facts that bad accordance may just happen to basically everyone.
In real life, can we choose the emotion that God give us?
“Please God, I don't want to cry right now. Do me a favour. Please, don’t come right now.”
“Please Mother Nature, I don’t want to be afraid of darkness now. How about tomorrow?”
Unfortunately, we can not. What we can do instead is...
To control over uncertainties, anger, insecurities, anxiety, etc.
Stoic philosophy believes that there are things that we can control (e.g. hard work, respond, judgement, action, mindset) and there are things that we can not control (e.g. success, prosperity, wealth, popularity, etc) namely to manage delicate emotions. Thus, we are encouraged to just focus more on things that we can control to get over those feelings.
Furthermore, Henry Manampiring in his “Filosofi Teras” (2019) mentioned the S-T-A-R technique to face any bad and uneasy feelings. Stop – on this phase, we should not deny any accordance happening to us. We are asked not to give any further judgment. For example, see "motorcycle accident" as a "motorcycle accident" without any judgment of other riders' fault or our own errors. Think & Assess – we should evaluate the events into some accounts such as 1) this is just normal to have a motorcycle accident, 2) many people have also experienced this and they survived, and 3) there must be a silver lining in every cloud. Respond – after all of that process, we can see negative accordance as something more profound. We can start loving the situation. We tend to receive any adversities without longer condemnatory.
To just let go of everything is the ultimate goal of vulnerability. Being vulnerable also means we are building resilience to any setbacks and difficulties. So whenever you feel bad and want to cry, feel it. This state is as usual as you can't help laughing at jokes.
At last, I have examined the reasons why feeling bad is totally fine. It is something that shapes human’s experience.
A sweet close reminder: to always be kind to yourself.
Best,
Fanaya.
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Thank you. This is helpful. I remember a quote from the novel "The Fault in Our Stars"
ReplyDelete"That's the thing about pain, it demands to be felt."
Sometimes I feel better after I cry.
Thanks for stepping by, Ayu! Truuuu... being vulnerable does not mean being weak :)
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