Are your feelings yours?

Do you feel emotions fully, and more importantly are they yours?

Or is it that others’ concerns, activities, and comments overwhelms your consciousness, and your own feelings are drowned in an ocean of unchecked messages on Whatsapp and Facebook.

Like a puppet, we are pulled in all directions by topics that are not really important for us. The media bamboozles us with its thousand plus distractions daily. Although our hearts have a special ability to emote, many live and feel on a superficial level and stay deprived of rich emotional fulfilment. The proof: we are active on social media, our necks down, fingers busy, and eyes riveted on our smart phones.

To discover complete and meaningful human emotions we need to think and feel for ourselves, not that others drag us to their agendas. Look at a child- how she expresses her emotions fully, and contrast it with a grown-up who ostensibly has control over his emotions in social gatherings, but is helplessly dragged by Face Book or Whatsapp. There are many men and women who give away no less than six precious hours a day for chats and updating status.

Ironically in the midst of this pulling of the mind, we imagine we are in control of our choices. But ask yourself a simple question: why do advertising companies spend millions of dollars to design an effective subliminal coding for you to choose their products over others? You may claim to be independent in your decision making, nevertheless it’s somebody else’s program on your brain.

When you let others run your life, don’t be surprised if a virus seeps inside and disturbs your relationship with yourself. You need to pause and take charge of your life.

If you are writing a novel, how would you feel if someone changes your plot and curbs your freedom of expression? You may be convinced about your character’s likes and goals but the story has a different twist than what you feel and think about. You land up writing another’s story, like a scribe who quietly pens down what his boss says. Will that novel really give you fulfilment, even if the world glorifies you for it? The mind and senses may revel in the fleeting glory of this world, but to you the vacuum in your heart is palpable. In the same manner, we lead our lives according to others’ vision, we feel emotions at a shallow level, and we think of matters not really important for us. This explains why despite success on the external front, actors and sports heroes, and even spiritual leaders face depression. Their lives are governed by their minds’ cribs or others’ problems, and not by their own inner connection to self and God.

You can decide to change your life today by keeping the smart phone aside for a few minutes, and look at the sky above your head. Pause, breathe, relax, and connect to yourself. That’s you!