“How far do our feelings take their colour from the dive underground? I mean, what is the reality of any feeling?” - Virginia Woolf

Feelings: What are they, are they real, where do they come from and where in the realm of space do they exist. We proclaim all of the time how we are feeling and what we feel, but aren’t feelings just as intangible as trust, faith, love and God?

I came to this quote probably about 5 or 6 years ago while studying Virginia Woolf in a Women’s Literature class in college. The tone of her prose is definitely one of those that can be classified as glum and with no encouraging ends to the means. That doesn’t mean it was not incredibly satisfying to the mind and completely filled with metaphors of which you just want to sit and detangle and mull over, aligning the ways in which you feel. Most recently I finished a book that had this very quote tucked into one of the author’s sentences as a way to, in his words, capture all that which he was trying to express.

I sit here running those two sentences over and over through my head trying to really unwrap them. The way we act out on our feelings, express our feeling, expose our feelings, and withhold our feelings- they all come from something. This something could have been an action, a reaction, or even a lack of action that drove us to take a plunge of sorts and arrive at some strong feeling. A feeling that we held with such importance, such immediate importance, a feeling that we needed to express, scream out loud, call for attention, or even retire into a world of depression and isolation.

Sure, I’ve been there and so have you. You have felt something so deep and so enjoyable or so painful that you can’t begin to believe the feeling will ever pass. You are consumed with feeling. At some point however the feeling passes, it dissipates into thin air and is no longer there, it seems to have just marched away alongside the tick of a clock. Did it ever exist, and if it did where is it now. After all, existence is to be present and accountable.

But when the feeling passes, when we come out of the “underground” as Woolf calls it, how much of those feelings come with us? Do you remember all of them? Do you remember the pain or the joy that you felt in either that fleeting moment or painfully long period of time? After all, you’ve come up from the underground, and in doing so you’ve shed the shapes, colours, and triggers for which the feeling was. So when we ask, “how are you feeling or what are you feeling,” are we trying to dig up something that really isn’t there, doesn’t exist and is just as intangible as love, faith, trust, and God?

So my trip-up to all of this is: should you act on feelings if they really aren’t a guaranteed and lasting thing? I guess it could apply to all other intangible things in life. Do you act on love and faith and trust? You invest in stocks, you invest in your job, and you invest in real estate. These are tangible things that you can measure, see, watch, develop and grow. Why do we invest in those that can not be tracked, measured and accounted for? Those are the most difficult to subscribe to and most definitely the most debated, the root to which all of our personal and sometimes global problems stem from and furthermore they are the things that most haunt our present and derail our future. So is there really any good time to expose our feelings, act on our feelings, and therefore act on impulse?

I can tell you one thing. Some of my most enjoyable moments and memories have happened because of impulse and fleeting feelings while some of my biggest mistakes and most hurtful decisions have likewise come from impulsive feelings. What is most important and do these two extremities balance the other one out?

Know Your Way Out Before You Get In!

I guess the situation comes to all of us now and again. We are given, or see the opportunity to invest, dive in full throttle with zero plans on how we’ll make it out should the investment not pan out. So how do you put both feet in, and still have one foot out? This isn’t a game of Twister, this is about maintaining your security and self-preservation.

We all know that when we aim to reach a certain self-acclaimed goal, we charge through the starting line in full speed. We don’t look in the peripheral, we don’t watch our components gaining speed, and we certainly pay no notice to the notion that this may not work and the potential for injury may lie ahead. We run, then we walk, then we crawl, and then, quite frequently we stop. We haven’t planned a way out, we just give up. So is there a way to get the best out of that race, and bow out with just as much dignity and grace as though you’ve won the race?

I’m posed with this question now. I keep having that sentence go through my head: “Know your way out before you get in.” I know its wise to have a plan B, but I feel like plan A doesn’t have a shot in hell if you keep thinking about being able to lean back on plan B. Are we really putting the extra sweat, the extra steam, the extra push into plan A when we’ve got the “way out” or the plan B all set to go?

I’m coming towards what seems to be yet another cross-road in my life. I am toying around with the investment now. To keep it vague: I can’t discern whether or not I should put it all in and know there won’t be a great return, and already know that I’ll most likely be falling back to plan B, or do I put it all in and give plan A the chance? What if what you think you want and need, are in fact not the things you want and need, and you’ve only yet to discover what those are? What if what you want and need is just one more left turn ahead? Should you stop at the red light before and shut the car off, or do you just keep driving, following your gut or whatever is leading you, and hope that left turn marked “destination/goal” is just moments, days, or months ahead?

Speaking of driving; you know when you are looking for your destination and all the signs and landmarks along the way just don’t seem to match where you’re trying to get to? You get annoyed, discouraged, and even sometimes turn around. Dare you should ask for directions, get another opinion and potentially reroute your plan, admit mistake and shame your dignity! The signs and landmarks along the way are foreign, they won’t be familiar, they won’t resemble those of which you’ve seen before, because you’re going somewhere new, you’re trying to make this go; you’re trying to make plan A work!

So when the landscape, the signs and the landmarks all don’t make sense and don’t seem familiar, keep on going and soon enough, if you stay the course, you will make it to the sign that will tell you “50 miles to your destination/goal.” Its there, when you see the goal ahead, you see the finish line and you give that last 50 minutes every single ounce of strength you have and you forget about plan B and make plan A!

Heck, fate has a way of dealing the cards we’ll have to just make do with. Perhaps you weren’t meant to get your plan A, perhaps you hit traffic, slowed down, got discouraged, and called it off, or perhaps you crashed- you burnt out and totaled the plan, or perhaps you broke down- your battery just gave up and you exhausted every last bit of energy. Whichever it may have been, you’ve got to decide if you’re going to have faith and follow your gut, trust your directions, and trust what you’ve been told and what you believe to be ahead. If you can’t see that finish line, if you can’t make it to the sign that tells you you are just 50 miles away from your destination, then I guess you had better make sure that plan B is ready to go!

But… and there is always a “but,” perhaps you better know your roadside assistance, and turn to them when you blow your tire, or when your battery fails, maybe they’re the one who has got your parachute all set to go before you have to give up plan A. And hell, if both plans fail, use plan A/B, it will help soften the blow!