It is lunchtime, and that should be a good thing, but I do not feel much like eating. Partially that’s because of how much I had for breakfast, and partially it is because my house has mirrors in it, and I see myself in them. I look like I rarely miss meals, and possibly knock other people down and take theirs. So I can skip a meal now and then.
It’s a sad, depressing day outside, and my work schedule doesn’t help. In January so far, I have typically worked from something like 5 or 6 in the morning until 6 or 7 at night. Yesterday I was up at 3 am and finished at 9 pm; this morning, I was up at a more typical 4 am, getting ready for a 6 am meeting with the president of the company I work for. I am a mathematician (an actuary, actually) by trade, I write poetry out here in spare moments, but spare moments are getting hard to come by.
I feel really hollow right now, exhausted, spent.
There is a strange theory prevalent these days that it requires moral authority to have feelings. I’m not quite sure where it came from, but it is of questionable validity. It takes all kinds of forms, for example:
- You aren’t smart enough to have feelings.
- You aren’t rich enough to have feelings.
- You aren’t poor enough to have feelings.
- You are too smart to have feelings.
- You are too (fill-in-the-blank) to have feelings.
I find this attitude to be depressing wherever I encounter it. The only thing I can say about it is that very few people who say they believe in it really do. Because they think their feelings matter, and that they are entitled to them, and they know in real life things aren’t that simple.
COVID-19 has simultaneously increased and decreased the amount of “real life” many of us experience, so that is an ideal breeding ground for ideas people typically hold only when removed from real life. Like owning the privilege of having feelings.
Oh, well, back to work.
For all of you out there reading this, my advice is “Feel your feelings. You’ve earned them.”
And if you’ve got better weather you can send this direction, we will take it.
