More and more, I structure my life around collecting novel experiences: good, bad, euphoric, disquieting, depressive, uncomfortable, wacky, common, real. Doesn’t much matter what it is, as long as it’s authentic and teaches me something. This makes me high openness, amenable to abetting crime, and someone who says “yes” more than they strictly should.
My friend told me that he aims to be on good terms with all his emotions. I found this to be a charming pursuit, so I adopted it too. At this stage of my existence, I believe I have made peace with most of my feelings, in the sense that I am entertained by watching myself experience them even as I am suffering/enjoying accordingly. Joy is nourishing, anger is enlivening, boredom is revealing. All possible emotions are more or less okay -- even the overwhelming ones -- because they’re all just a certain amalgamation of sensation, and sensation is incapable of killing me on its own. My mind is putting on a seriously gripping show curated exactly to my tastes, and all I have to do is turn my attention toward it.
My two social spheres are conspiring to get me to notice more objective truths about my subjective experience:
Rationalists, who are afraid to overconfidently assert any statement, even a minimally important and impossible-to-vet one such as the state of one’s inner world.
Conscious communicators/“authentic relaters”, whose restraint from presenting stories as fact has begun to seep into my own speech patterns.
Both are good at forcing me to continually grope at what I believe to be true, then edit out anything that is merely a shaky guess (that is, until more information is presented). I have come to accept myself as an unskilled lifeform privy to a set of natural inner phenomena that is only sometimes grounded in reason and more often conjured from nothing at all, and not feel too bad about it either way. In other words, I don’t just feel. I also notice when I feel.
I used to claim that the purpose of life is to be happy, but now I think that is a dumb mission given that it’s impossible to be happy all the time. Instead, my refreshed theory is that the point of life -- or at least, a less wounding angle from which to approach it -- is to welcome the full breadth of being alive, whatever that means for you. Subsequently, everything becomes worth exploring. Subsequently, everything is good data, even if not everything is good.
My favorite emotions are the ones I’m feeling for the first time, like new forms of wonder: kissing under backyard string lights soundtracked by the muffled din of a house party, making real money off my bullshit words, the moonlit ocean holding infinite space for my fury. Also, new varieties of psychic damage: people I think are great finding each other merely tolerable, being chastised for stupidity in the public square, receiving a residual calendar invite to an annually recurring Valentine’s Day date from an ex who hasn't spoken to me in years, missing obvious cues to step up as a daughter, friend, person.
How exciting, to fail in ways previously unknown! How exciting, to gingerly test the function of my limbs after smashing them unceremoniously into the floor, to bang my head against the wall for sport, to watch the scabs form and heal and know that I am capable of trying over and over until I stick the landing. How exciting, to finally get something right after all this time.
I’ve given up trying to experience only good things. I’ve given up on trying to predict what contortions of my personality and applications of my tired willpower facilitate them. Now I just try to pay attention to whatever unique combination of sensation my consciousness is attempting to gift me.
Today was a Tuesday. I ate a salad for lunch and laughed at something my coworker said. I contemplated the end of my relationships, and then the end of the world. I tracked the amount of time I spent writing emails. I drank jasmine tea with almond milk. I ran through the park with friends calmly and without expectation. All of it mattered.