‘Feelings are the one thing you cannot choose. Otherwise you wouldn’t feel them. They can seem wrong or confusing or even frustrating or devastating, but they are there. If we could just choose them, we wouldn’t have many problems in life, at least not significant ones. What we can choose is how to approach what we do feel. Even this is often tough work, and the first, biggest and maybe most important and for some reason difficult step is to acknowledge a feeling.’
Bjørn Clasen
3 January 2012
3 comments:
It sounds familiar. Maybe it is the common sense in what you say. But I'd say that human beings are pretty selective in their feelings. So feelings, can be chosen depending on the feeling. If one can be selective, it means that the choice is there. But again, common sense says that feelings are just feelings, meant to be erratic and overwhelming, or just present.
I'd still say that you cannot choose feelings, that lies in the very sense of the concept 'to feel'. It is something unconscious.
By the way, it goes for positive feelings as well of course. We can feel pleasure in situations or events, which we have 'chosen' that we don't 'want' to feel positive (or anything) about.
Too complicated. Let's leave it to a plain level of human psyche. Feelings are just there, ready to overwhelm us whenever we expect or not expect them to.
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