Saturday, April 19, 2025
It wasn’t until I learned to feel my feelings that I understood how to let them go. Boredom is a feeling we don’t like to feel, so we occupy ourselves with so-called entertainment. But boredom is misunderstood. It’s a feeling of pushing away the moment. It’s a feeling that this moment isn’t interesting. It’s an urge to escape, but the best escape is learning you can’t get away. Let the feeling escape from you by feeling it.
When I used to be bored, I’d engage in mindless things like internet use, television watching, or other vices to “veg out.” Those means of checking out didn’t allow me the freedom I sought. When you “check out,” the feelings are repressed, and they “hang out” in the background.
The best thing I ever did was to bring my feelings to the foreground – to check them out, to investigate them more intimately. This was especially true when I went through the death of my best friend and a hard divorce – two grueling events that happened within 2 years of each other. Each time the urge to cry came up, it was like a convulsion, I allowed it. I felt it. I didn’t push it away – I embraced it, then released it.
Allowing my feelings through, rather than denying them by pacifying myself in some “checking out” activity, was the greatest gift I gave to myself. My childhood taught me to repress feelings rather than express them. First, notice – check ‘em out. Sit with them and see how harmless they are. If you feel a feeling, especially an unpleasant one, and recognize how harmless it is, they tend to lessen their strength. Express yourself in something cathartic.
Notice feelings; then feel them ; then express them gently; then release them peacefully. Don’t check out. Check it out. Check it off. Let it go.