We all know we have feelings because they are constant for every living being. Our feelings are the influences of our external and internal environments on our consciousness. Different cultures express these influences in different ways. For example, while the English say “I am cold” or “I feel cold”, the Yoruba say “otutu n mu mi” (cold is catching me). We have those obvious physical feelings of our environment such as hot, cold, dry, or wet on our skin and body surfaces; texture and dimensions from the use of our hands; tastes of sweet, bitter, salt, pungent, or sour on our tongue and mucous surfaces;and satiety, alertness, pain, discomfort, drowsiness, ache, or tiredness from within our bodies.
The events of life also result in feelings. When The Democrats in the USA did poorly in the midterm elections two years ago and the obviously shaken President Obama was asked about it, he said: “It feels bad”. When Tiger Woods became the world’s number one golfer again after his trip from grace to grass to grace and he was asked about his victory, he said, “It feels good”. Apart from the particular consciousness of environmental stimuli that are continuous and numerous in our lives, we can also have a general feeling of everything is good or everything is bad.
All our particular feelings contribute towards our general feeling of good or bad. The general feeling of good or bad may be transient or may become stable in our lives and this is what affects our state of health, especially mental health.
For every feeling we consider bad and for every feeling we consider good, we have several choices: to accept it, to suppress it, to modify it, to prevent it in future, or to seek it in future. Naturally we tend to accept and seek feelings that we consider good and to suppress or prevent the feelings that we consider bad. Unnaturally, supernaturally, or abnormally, we may choose to or be capable of accepting and seeking the feelings that we consider bad or suppressing and preventing the feelings that we consider good. A woman could use a sex toy to get an orgasm. A monk could fast or whip himself for penance.
We may not always be able to induce, control, suppress, or prevent our feelings because they are natural. We should however, as we advance in age, intelligence, and wisdom, become familiar with factors that produce various feelings because we can control some of such factors. The desire to control such factors has driven much research in science and technology and directed the course of civilization throughout history and throughout the world.
In our materially advanced world, it should be scandalous for human beings to have to suffer from extreme or perpetual heat, cold, discomfort, hunger, thirst, pain, ignorance, etc. because of the colossal knowledge we have acquired and the possibilities to apply resources of our world to prevent such feelings.
While our health and wellbeing can be governed by collective responsibility within society (family, state, etc.), individual effort is also necessary for managing our feelings, good or bad, towards normal health.
Once in a while, the world experiences a tragedy: a gunman brings down innocents on a normal day in a normal environment or a nice and normal unsuspicious person commits suicide. The lawyers plead “not guilty” on the basis of insanity and many innocents remain dead because of that insanity.
Every human being can fall sick if invaded by an effective disease causing factor. Preventive medicine is thus important for all of us to practice. Every human being is also capable of insanity. We all have some power or capacity or common sense to refuse, to control, to damn, to counteract, or to remove some of the factors that results in an overall “bad feeling” of insanity.
Avoiding sensitizers, precipitators, inducers, and enhancers of dangerous bad feeling is not only good for our own mental health and overall well-being; it also makes us safer and better members of society, especially our families.
In environments where there are stable social inequalities, where injustice is norm, or where abuses of various types reign, we often resort to living with and suppressing bad feelings when it is not necessary or helpful to do so or where it may be overall harmful for us to suppress such feelings.
Parents who understand the effects of environmental factors on overall health should train their children in communication skills. There are more than one methods of communication and various agencies – including parents, doctors, law enforcement, employers, religious support, and friends – to communicate with. Children should not be alone in their feelings if they do not need to be. Neither should adults. Communication or sharing of feelings is often a path to relief, balance, and good health.
