Feelings matter! How you feel is important. Acknowledging your true state can be liberating. Squashing things down, pretending everything is all right when it’s not, is a recipe for disaster, further down the line. The hard part is genuinely working out whether that slight feeling of fluttery panic is anxiety, or fear or you’re simply not sure where to start with something. But of course this can be ramped up to the ‘stop in your tracks, I’m going to throw up’ moment. And exposing the root cause of that, I think can be equally difficult.
So checking how you feel and more importantly why, is important, but you don’t want to remain looking inwards all the time. That way lies selfish madness. Only how much is too much!? Love your neighbour as you love yourself is the balance. I need to know myself and take care of myself so that I can look outwards and be able to help others. Or is it the other way round – as I love my neighbour, I will learn to understand myself?!
Like most things in life we can try our best, and so probably wander between the two extremes. From this I take great hope, because sometimes I must be passing the halfway point, and therefore, for a moment I am as close as I ever going to be at getting it right.
