On Limited Emotional Vocabulary
The issue with limited vocabulary we have to label our emotions and feelings.
We have two words, at most, to describe majority of things that we feel throughout our day: happy and un-happy/sad. The hard black and white categorization. Everything is reduced to either the hedonistic pursuit of happy-ness or dreadful "un-happiness".
Only recently have I noticed that how this is wrong on so many levels. In today's world we have emphasised on "being happy" above everything. We want to be happy when we are doing anything. If we are not so, there is something wrong with the thing that we are doing. We start doubting that it is probably not the right thing for us. Without realizing that happiness is just another temporary feeling that we can have without any specific reason among the multitudes of other emotions and feelings that we have through out the day. We don't have enough labels for all the grey portion of the spectrum of emotions or may be, we are just not present enough to label them appropriately.
Don't we see that on some days we are just feeling so good the moment we wake up, for no apparent reason, and we decide to do a couple of things to add on to that "happy" feeling by reading that book some more, going on a long walk or a hike, making a good dinner and calling our friends to join, giving to donation, putting a big smile on our face, appreciating the nature, or praying to God more sincerely, among other things.
On the other extreme, there are some days, so heavy on our hearts, so dark on our minds, so crippling on our limbs and so strong on our nerves for no apparent reason as well. We don't want to wake up to meet the demands of that day, we don't want to put smile on our face, we feel jealous of the "happy" people, sky seems unusually cloudy, we find our roommate terribly loud, our colleagues' sips comically irritating and our work soulless.
But there are days (times/moments within a day) between these two extremes, the ones we encounter more frequently. The ones with which we are more familiar than we want to accept. The days when we are simply alive, when things are happening at their usual pace and we can notice them. These are the days when we are "not-happy" and because we are not so, they get labelled as unhappy-days or sad-moments. We may be bored, irritated, finding a certain task hard, or afraid but these are not sadness. These are legitimate feelings of the moments.
This should not be the case, I have realized recently. My own personal vocabulary mainly consists of these two words to categorize majority of the feelings and emotions that I experience throughout the day. I want to expand this labelling. So that life is not made miserable with one's own hands. To accept the pace of life, and its diverse set of emotions and feelings. To not constantly try to run from boredom and always clinch to whatever escapes I can get to ephemeral happiness.