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I grew up in the mecca of strong feelings, wealthy Northern California in the ’70s, people getting in touch with and milking their emotions as though they’re the divine font of pure wisdom. I became a sensitive man who could process emotions all day and night. That’s how you got the chicks during my formative years. We were all about being authentic, not like those shallow, button-down, plastic people who kept up appearances.
That era spawned two cultural babies, often conflated, though in a way opposites—New Age passion-mongering and Zen chill. Follow your bliss, but also stay centered in the stillness. Maybe the vague idealized convergence was to feel everything intensely yet not be affected by it, like watching the movie of your life as if from a safe distance.
I eventually turned my attention to science’s safe distance but with a difference—neutrality about the non-neutrality of our anxious lives, each of us and our heart-intense struggling to make it in a world seductively tuned to make it feel like we can reach the peaks of glory when really, behind that facade, this is no place for glory-seekers. We all die, and before that, we're trapped and torn at by events beyond our control.
I like to try on perspectives the way I shop for clothes. When I put them on, I don’t assume I have to buy them. It’s a lawyerly skill. Lawyers can make an argument for anything.
In other words, I think what I write, but not think as in knowing—rather think as in think about or consider. In that spirit, here’s an attitude I find myself trying on these days.
I don’t want to feel things intensely. Not in real life. I’ll take my intense feelings vicariously, thank you. There’s no movie too sad or gruesome that I can’t watch it.
But real life? By now, I’m skimming. I steer clear of drama because I steer clear of strong emotions, mine, or anyone else's.
Oh, I’ve had them all, the intense highs and lows. Not like some, god forbid, but I get the general picture. The highs are great, but they’re like loading me up for a smackdown. And those lows? Excruciating. To say you want to feel deeply is like saying you welcome getting gored.
Some do. Not me. Some would say I’m a shallow wimp for not wanting to feel. Mostly, though, that’s people who shout at their neighbors to distract themselves from their own feelings. I know that feeling too. I’ve been known to yell at others to forget my own pain.
Why should I have to feel intensely? This is a terrifying world, so much to care about, so much to lose. In life, you get oriented and start plummeting.
The non-human creatures—I want to be like them. No melodrama. They crush each other’s carcasses, liquefy their innards, and suck the life out of each other, but to them, it’s not the end of the world. Many creatures feel pain, but even for the most sensate animal, death is not a fraction of the catastrophe it is to us, humans.
I want to be like them. Pain, OK—can’t escape that—but feelings? Emotions? I’d like them turned down to a mellow hum. I’ll sacrifice the highs if it means I can avoid the lows. I’d take contentment with maybe an occasional spring in my step.
But you learn from your feelings, they tell me. That’s why you should feel deeply. Honey, I’ve learned plenty. A lot of the lows keep goring away at you, making you scrape the barrel for lessons when there are none forthcoming. It’s like having an excruciating phantom limb. Nothing left to fix, nothing left to learn.
Yeah, they say, but positive and negative reinforcement—it’s how we learn our way in the world. Sure, but for that, you need intensity? Look, I get the picture. A pellet of pleasure means I should do more of that; a mild shock means I should do less of it. I don’t need a megaphone of feelings blaring in my ears like some sociopathic marine sergeant. I get it. Strong emotions mostly make me overreact. I don’t need that goad to take oversteps in the right direction.
Some people may be so wound up by hormonal certainty that they accept nothing less than strong emotions. The driven need to find someone to fall ecstatically in love with. Romantics fancy themselves courageous, but what for? What do we get for riding up to such unsustainable heights?
I know there’s no thermostat for the heart. Some people just can’t help but need the heat. But to the extent I can choose, I’d take more inertness. It’s hard to pay attention to what’s going on really when you’ve got all that melodramatic background music blaring full blast at the heart.
Is all that visceral spin good for anything? I hear the case that it is, and it isn’t, romantic memes about living life to the fullest and zen memes about unflappable, wince-free presence. I’ve heard don’t suppress your feelings, however strong they are, or they’ll give you cancer. I’ve also heard don’t let them rule the roost.
Suppressing them is one thing. I’m talking about weighing in, to the extent one can, in favor of not having them in the first place. I have a fear of feeling like I have a fear of intimacy. Not all fears are illegitimate. My fears are hard-earned, and I think sound ones.
I’m glad to be as wary of the drama as I am. Like an animal, because without the awesome power of language, that is what I am—an animal. My death matters little more than a bug’s. I want to remember that in this often terrifying world.
