Member-only story

Living is feeling

No emotions are either good or bad.

Serge Faldin
2 min readOct 26, 2020
Photo by Andrew Ly on Unsplash

For a long time, I bought in the “happiness myth.”

I thought we’re supposed to be happy. Joyful. All the time.

And every time when I wasn’t feeling great I would start thinking, “Perhaps, I am doing something wrong. Perhaps I need to change something in my life. Quit my job? Break up with my girlfriend? Move to Spain?”

After all, no matter where you look online, it seems as if everyone is living their happiest lives.

But now I see, that happiness is a pipe dream.

Instead of living happily, we should strive to be alive.

We often think of emotions as either good or bad. As if there were certain emotions we’re supposed to experience (e.g., happiness) and emotions we better avoid (e.g., regret, pain, sadness, etc.).

But no emotions are good or bad — it’s us, humans, that make them so. Animals also have emotions — some more than others — and yet, they don’t have a label around it: no emotion is good and no emotion is bad.

They just are.

The truth is, we need all emotions. All feelings are good because they are feelings — that is, they are there to be felt.

--

--

Serge Faldin
Serge Faldin

Written by Serge Faldin

Honest thoughts. Unpopular opinions. Not necessarily true or smart. | Bylines: The Guardian, Truthout, Meduza, Prospect | Personal essays: sergeys.substack.com

Responses (2)