How Are You Feeling?
I want to know.
First, a question.
How are you feeling?
There is no response too short, too long, or too messy. No judgment. Only truth.
We live in a culture that asks this question, but often isn’t interested in the answer.
“How are you?” posits the coworker, the long-ago acquaintance, the fellow parent at drop-off. “How have you been?” The subtext is that only a polite response is welcome.
Please don’t make me uncomfortable.
Please don’t share too much, or expect me to know how to reply.
Please keep it brief, I have places to be.
“Oh, you know,” you say, with a cursory wave of the hand. Fill-in-the-blank. I’m good. I’m bad. I’m coping. I’m probably the same as you.
I sometimes joke that my fingers are smarter than my mouth, because I’m a thousand times more comfortable writing versus speaking. But my fingers don’t have anything on my tear ducts.
Those little glands are the wisest part of my body. They know things I haven’t given myself the space to acknowledge. Like a black light of truth, they can scan an all-too-crowded landscape and illuminate what truly matters. They know when I’m lying, particularly to myself. They know the outcome before I do. They have never been wrong.
My tears love to assert themselves in hundreds of everyday moments. Home makeover shows. Commercials for corporate behemoths that still manage to pull on the heartstrings. Opening numbers and curtain calls. Marathons. Sunsets. Earnest displays of affection. People chasing their dreams. People chasing my dreams. Dogs, all of them, always.
“Look!” the tears say, stunning me into attention. “I spy your deepest held dream! You ignored it, so I thought I’d remind you.”
They love surveying the evidence of someone’s sacrifices, hard work, and courage — whether it pays off or not.
“Oh I’m sorry, did you forget you were human?” they ask. “Did you mistakenly believe you were a productivity machine, in search of glory or accolades? Let me remind you of the point here. The point, my friend, is to LIVE.”
I don’t remember when I first got the message that emoting was apparently shameful. It could’ve been anywhere, really — a picture book, an early teacher, the invisible, all-reaching hand of societal programming. Wherever it came from, my brain absorbed it, along with tricks for how to curtail one’s crying in public. Thank goodness my tears never got the memo.
As a kid, I was terrified of our neighbor’s dog, Lily. She was a tiny, angry dachshund, whose incessant bark was rivaled only by her desire to consume my juvenile ankles. Our homes had no fence between them, and Lily seemingly never met a leash, which meant her next outburst could erupt at any moment.
If I ran, she’d chase after me. The faster I got, the more tenacious she became. Eventually I learned the best way to greet her was calmly and respectfully — leading with trust instead of fear — where she would (mostly) respond in kind.
Feelings are kind of like Lily. You can’t avoid them, you can’t outrun them, and if you try they’ll follow you, growing more intense by the moment. Your best bet is to confront the fuckers and ask them what they want.
To put it mildly: The world is a lot.
This week, this month, this year. Decades and centuries before this. It’s like we live on an emotional treadmill with no control over the speed. The more we attempt to keep on moving, to keep going through the motions to maintain the status quo, the more curveballs the system keeps throwing.
The thing is — and quite a few politicians seem to have forgotten this, or at least how to capitalize on it — emotions have power. Emotions are power. They’re the way we discover truth. The way we connect. The way we mobilize and inspire. They’re what make us fully human. And they are much too important to ignore.
We lack spaces to emote, safely, together. But it’s no wonder, in a world where we aren’t encouraged to acknowledge, sit with, and process our emotions — to feel them — in the first place. How can we share this side with others when we’re told, explicitly or otherwise, not to experience it for ourselves?
Feeling is a direct line to intuition. To the subtle pull toward what moves us, what brings us alive. Oftentimes, it’s not the same as what we’re told, or is at odds with what’s expected of us. But we owe it to ourselves to listen.
In 1982, writer and activist Audre Lorde gave an interview in which she discussed how her writing came from a personal, emotional space, calling upon insights that arose not from thought (a product of existing structures), but from feeling:
“Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge. They are chaotic, sometimes painful, sometime contradictory, but they come from deep within us. And we must key into those feelings and begin to extrapolate from them, examine them for new ways of understanding our experiences. This is how new visions begin, how we begin to posit a new future nourished by the past. This is what I mean by matter following energy, and energy following feeling. Our visions begin with our desires.”
When it comes to pursuing our desires, or even expressing ourselves, we often wait for permission — from others, from some outside source. We ask for signs. We stall, hoping at some moment the pieces will line up just right.
But in my experience, signs are rarely external. Permission is rarely granted. A prickle from a tear duct is as good an answer as any.
It may seem audacious. It may not make sense. It may be a departure from your routine, your upbringing, your area of experience. Follow it anyway.
How are you feeling?
From day to day, from scene to scene, it bears repeating. Go toward it. Step inside it. Remain curious as to the message. Our feelings have something to tell us — about life, but even more so, about living.
What moves you is what matters. It’s quite possibly the only thing that does.
Card of the Week
Here is this week’s card for the collective, as well as some thoughts to carry into the days ahead. As most modern readers will tell you, the tarot is not about fortunetelling, nor is it about neat, definitive answers. The cards are simply one path to reflection, a way of better knowing ourselves and others through universal themes. If this reading resonates with you, great! And if not, no worries. Take whatever may be helpful and leave the rest.
A number of years back, a friend said something that changed my life. I had a tentative relationship with writing at the time — as a job and even as a hobby.
Like many people, I’d thought it was selfish to pursue a creative career. Experience had taught me that work was synonymous with toil. I found it equally presumptive to share work no one explicitly asked for, or to assert my voice without an invitation.
“Keeping something to yourself is a form of stealing,” she said. “What if other people could benefit from it?”
She helped me see that it might just be the other way around.
If you have something to share — a story, a talent, a point of view — putting it out in the world is an act of generosity. To not do this — to keep these things to yourself, even out of fear — is selfish in its own way, because others can never experience it.
The Six of Pentacles carries a similar message. This is a moment to give and give freely. But giving doesn’t always look the way you expect.
In tarot, sixes are positive cards, often connected to the sweeter parts of humanity, while pentacles (or coins) are often translated as material wealth. By this logic, the Six of Pentacles wants us to share the wealth. If you have material resources to share — with those in need, or with worthy organizations — that is a noble way to give back. But it isn’t the only way.
Your time is a gift. Your skills are a gift. So are your words of support, education, or encouragement.
This isn’t our first visit from the Six of Pentacles, which last appeared in February, encouraging us to redefine “wealth” and “abundance” on our own terms, using broad and creative strokes.
This time, the message feels different. All of the same principles apply, but now, there is an additional layer. It asks us to examine our relationship to generosity as it relates to healing and connection.
Oftentimes, this card depicts a simple transaction. One person handing something to another — money, food, a present. One person gives, another receives, and in their own way, everyone benefits.
But on this particular card, the image isn’t so cut-and-dry. A hand appears to be bleeding onto a sentient plant, while the greater world is aflame. Perhaps the hand is attempting to extinguish the flames…or maybe nurturing the plant’s growth. Are we witnessing a scene of suffering or growth, pain or nourishment, chaos or progress? What, exactly, is going on here?
Here, the Six of Pentacles reminds us that nothing exists in a vacuum. Opposing forces, things that may initially appear to be at odds, often go hand-in-hand. Pain eventually leads us to healing. Destruction eventually makes way for progress.
As much as this is a card about giving, it is equally about helping. About meaningful contact of all kinds.
In the days ahead, whenever the opportunity presents itself, practice sharing kind words, extending forgiveness, or granting permission. Verbally and mentally. To others, and to yourself. These, too, are offerings of great worth.
From the time we are little, we are taught the “golden rule,” the grade-school aphorism adapted from the bible: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” No matter what one believes, about laws, energy, or the hidden workings of the universe, every tradition has its own version of the message that what you put out comes back around.
The golden rule works just as well if you replace the word “do” with the word “give.” Give unto others — the space, time, understanding, compassion — as you would have them give unto you. And as you do, remember to give these things to yourself, as well.
We are more connected than we know. More linked than we acknowledge. In order to help and heal others, we must first help and heal ourselves. In order to heal ourselves, we must extend our grace outward.
Around it goes, and so do we. It is a maddeningly perfect circle, cycling without end. But more than that, it is a gift.
Thank you so much for being here! If you enjoyed this letter and would like to receive future installments, please consider becoming a subscriber.
You are my favorite writer. Thank you for your inspiring and beautiful words each week.
As someone with high-performing tear ducts of my own, I relate to this whole-heartedly. 🥹