Feelin' Groovy

As my teenage-hood comes to a close (gotta start working on that time machine, damnit!), I've been considering feelings, and if they are unequivocally adolescent. If a seventeen year old is suffering through a breakup with a pint of ice cream and watching Sleepless in Seattle on repeat, it's a healthy way of dealing with one's first heartbreak. If a thirty year old does the same thing, it's considered breaking the rules of a diet, and wallowing.

Wallowing, past age twenty, is a first degree crime. How can you bemoan that guy who went off with that girl when there are starving children in Africa? The world had just as many problems when you were a child; the difference is, it was cute for you to respond to everything with "me! My feelings! Mine!" as a kid. As an adult, that kind of behavior is selfish, offensive, and bad for the sake of that ten page paper that must be handed in to your professor by Monday, no exceptions.

So are adults bound to a life of neutrality? Are the glory days of angst and bouts of "nobody understands!" over? At times, I think those feelings should be buried in a grave along with the hot pink pants my teenage self thought were a good idea. As a person who has an emotion when there is no pudding left at the convenience store, it was difficult to come to terms with this fact of life. You mean I can't go cry in my dorm room and cry, "what is this world coming to?"? I have to shrug, say "oh, that's fine," and move on with my life? Or I could, perhaps, buy more pudding. Logic is a Godsend.

So anticlimactic. So...grownup.

But even though I've been an "adult" (I shudder at the word) for over a year, feelings haven't poof, gone away. If anything, the first year of being an adult brings the most feelings because you find yourself facing job interviews, professors that aren't interested in hearing that sob story about your dog, car payments, friends you've suddenly outgrown, and that weird flippy thing your hair decided to do. So what do you do? Tackle all these problems with a day planner and a fanny pack (because everyone knows a fanny pack is the sure sign of wise old-fart-dom)? Of course not. You have a little cry in your closet and try the sob story about your grandmother on your professor.

But as I've seen that feelings aren't magically disappearing from my life, I've also realized they're not  necessarily bad. Sure, there are plenty of "I'm mad, I'm sad, I'm annoyed," moments that make you want to run screaming around the block. But without emotions, we wouldn't have gratitude for those nights that you have crazy random happenstances with friends. Without feelings, we'd be without pride for our hard work, or our loved one's successes. I respect my friends' choices to go about life in a way that works for them, but if everyone were like that, we'd all be a bunch of robots that pump out productivity and synonyms for indifference.

You know that moment when you feel like joy is just emanating from your body, and you could run a hundred miles? Or when you're laughing so hard you can't breathe? Or when someone makes you smile when you've been crying? I wouldn't trade that for anything. Not even the stamp of adulthood.

Namaste.