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You know those moments when the world feels really good: could be the perfect release of hormones after physical activity, or the moments when you’re truly invested in creating something, or perhaps, quite simply, the entire universe breathes gratitude and you feel it. How long do those moments last?
If you’re like me (which like, why would you be, but also why wouldn’t you be?), then these moments are as fleeting as your ability to find something that you’ve done wrong in the last few minutes, days, or years. The brain scans decades of memories and then focuses in on the little regrets. OR, your brain finds the things you haven’t done yet–the dentist appointments you’ve put off, or your taxes, or how you should get a PhD not because you want one but because you feel like you should have one. When you write it out it begins to seem absurd. But so is life.
This is how we often approach feeling good. Feeling good is so simple in theory. Here’s this feeling, it is good, let me hang on to it. Of course, the anxiety centers of the modern human brain need constant stimulation (this isn’t science, but it certainly seems that way), so we are unable to cling to our basic human right to simple pleasure.
I’ve felt this most recently with the nagging and immeasurable guilt of I should be doing something else. Of course, one might ask, what is it I should be doing? Is what I’m doing now inherently harmful? This guilt stems from the idea that every moment should be imbued with productive purpose. I’d argue that this is a ridiculous concept. We are not machines–production is NOT our primary concern. Capitalism and the myriad sociopolitical forces that have shaped this world would have you believe that your time is indeed your greatest resource for earning something or making stuff, BUT we’re just animals. We have no biological necessity to produce anything besides offspring and (as homo sapiens) various tools of survival. Your time is not necessarily better spent any other way.
I am going to offer a radical and dangerous idea that could shatter our global economic system: you’re allowed to just feel good. Right now. Wherever you are and whatever it is you’re doing–let that moment linger. You don’t have to do anything else. You’ll end up doing it if you need to. You’re a great ape, not an instrument of production. You don’t need to earn anything in this moment.
It’s not as easy as it seems, but it’s a transformative thought process. If we realize that the good feelings often come from nowhere and can last as long as we allow them to, then we also realize that we are the fountains of goodness. We generate and recycle these feelings of gratitude and goodness from our very own springs. We don’t need outside gratification and distraction once we realize that we don’t.
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Previously published here and reprinted with the author’s permission.
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Photo: Pexels