Should we let the world know what we are feeling always???

I remember that it was a weekend morning when my cousin and I were sitting on the balcony, watching our milieu. We were discussing some political issues when she suddenly asked me, “Should we let the world always know about our feelings and emotions?”

Obfuscated by the change of topic, I sat there feeling stupid. When her question dawned upon me, I asked “Why ask this?” “Just felt like this”, she answered and returned to our initial topic.

That night, the question kept on spinning in my mind. I couldn’t rest till I found an answer to her question. So I started analyzing her idea.

What do we mean by “emotion” and “feeling”?

‘Feeling’ is the effect of a particular situation on the mind or senses of a human being. Apart from this, it also indicates ambience, idea or opinion. ‘Emotion’ is an outlandish concoction of strong feelings like love, jealousy, fear, joys, sorrows, anger.

So now, that we have a clear idea of each term, we must find the answer to the question. Should we let the world always know about our feelings or should we camouflage them, keeping them unrevealed? Before we venture further to find the answer, we must concede that feelings are spontaneous and our emotions are a part of who we are and what we are.

Every human does not always react the same way to a same situation. Each of us has a different belief, a different opinion about the same thing though some of our ideas or attitudes may be almost same. So, I ask again, should we express our ideas, opinions and emotions freely to the people around us? The answer depends on the situation.

Supposedly, someone you really hated all your life dies. You hate him and in the past, you publicly declared it. When he dies, would you disparage him in front of his mourning family?

Let’s look at the situation in two ways. Supposedly, you two were political rivals. What example would you set in front of your people, who cast their votes to you? They would obviously expect you to show some deference to your late rival but you abhorred him and still do. Would you speak out and face a future where not a single person would cast a vote for you? Or would you suppress your feelings, send condolence to the grieving family and welcome a future where everyone votes for you and wants you to be the protagonist?

Now, supposedly you two were childhood best friends and both of you were established in the same fields. Your friend dies suddenly and you would definitely feel grief for him. Would you not let the whole world know about your pains of losing your best friend? Or would you just keep it locked up inside you and eat you up from inside?

At times, it is better to spit out your feelings because it helps to alleviate your pains and sorrows and helps you maintain your sanity. At times, it is better to camouflage your feelings to hide your Achilles’ heels and prevent your foes from discovering a weapon to destroy you.

When you are happy, you will want to let the world know that you are the happiest person in the world. In my society, there is a phenomena called “casting the evil eye” which is done by our jealous foes and it results in our transient happiness to be eclipsed by permanent sorrows and misfortunes. Then again when we feel sad, we will want to share it to emancipate our heart from the sorrows but again our foes will know about our Achilles’ heels and prod the soft parts of our heart to lead us to our demise.

You will say, we can hide our emotions from our foes, and then they’ll not know about our weakness. True, you can do that but how many ill-wishers of yours will declare in front of you about their machinations? Would you yourself let a person know that you are his ill-wisher? People have become cunning these days and our foes are always around us, wearing the mask of liaisons, slandering the value of friendship. So, how will you distinguish your foes from friends?

Anyways, different person has different ideas and so we cannot expect the world to comprehend us completely. Goo goo dolls said in their song Iris, “And I don’t want the world to see me, because I don’t think that they’ll understand, when everything’s meant to be broken.” So, there’s no point in speaking out loud because you will be misunderstood. After all, our elders always said, ‘many men many minds.’

I believe that some feelings must be kept hidden while others can be expresses. As I said before, the expressing factor depends on the situation, on the feeling and on the people around us. We should be somewhere in between. We should first reflect our feelings in our own tranquil depths before we decide to let the whole world know. Like Manuel Bandeira said,-

‘Be like the flowing river,

Silent at night.

Be not afraid of the dark,

If there are stars in the sky, reflect them back.

If there are clouds in the sky,

Remember, clouds, like the river, are water,

So gladly reflect them too,

In your own tranquil depths.’-

we should be like the flowing river.