Pettit:The Eyeball Test

In many languages, you do not become your feelings. You are not sad or anxious, but rather you have sadness or anxiety on you. Your feelings are like a cloak, sometimes dark and heavy, and sometimes light and lovely, but the cloak can be thrown off and your feelings come and go. Who you are temporarily houses your emotions. The Persian poet Rumi said something similar. As he put it, 'the human being is a guesthouse: every morning, a new arrival, a joy, a depression, a meanness. Some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.' The guest house view of emotions has two benefits. The first is to appreciate the rare and fleeting joy of good feelings. This pleasure will not last, and that love might not be forever, and so, like guests in a house, we should enjoy good company while it is still here. The second benefit goes back to something the German poet Rilke once said, when he said: 'Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.' Because recognising how fleeting these negative emotions are allows us to carry on. It's often when we think that we are become anxiety, or become sadness, that we find it hard to find hope. But seeing your feelings as visitors who will one day go allows you to wait them out. You are not your feelings. You are not your thoughts. You are something more wonderful and mysterious. Just keep going, and enjoy what is good while it is here.