The Feeling They Don't Tell You About and Other Related Thoughts

Emotion—a topic as old as time itself. One can only imagine the feelings of the first protozoic slime molds to ever sit aimlessly on this bizarre rock we call Earth. Flash Forward. Happiness, Sadness, Fear, Anger; almost all of us experience these. We are taught about them in "school" and see them in media like "Caillou" and "Avatar: The Way of Water." Real blog-heads, and real therapists of said blog-heads, know of the Feelings Wheel (feelingswheel.com), which describes even more emotions than you might have ever known existed within you. Advanced, college-level feelings like "cheeky," "detestable," and "persecuted." Take a moment to look at the feelings wheel. How are you feeling in this moment? How have you been feeling today as a whole? What about this week, this month? Which feelings do you feel most often? Now take a step back and look at the feelings wheel again. Strike emotion from your heart and truly examine it. Upon doing so you may have some questions. Questions like, "Why is this a wheel? Do we rotate around all of these feelings?" or "Why are so many of the feelings negative? Why is it so much easier to pinpoint our bad, fearful, angry, disgusted, and sad feelings than our happy ones?" But today ask yourself this question: Is something missing? Today we are here to discuss the feeling they don't tell you about: Neutral Emotion. Next time you are sitting in your bed watching a YouTube video suggested to you by Big Algorithm™ and something jolts you out of your cocomelonesque trance, or when you are sitting on the toilet at work scrolling through instagram, take a pause. What are you feeling? You may say, "I am feeling nothing. But no, not nothing—I am still Feeling. And if I thought about it I could certainly find something to be emotional about in my current situation. But instead I am just kind of here." This is Neutral Emotion. The asymptotic center of the feelings wheel. Neutral Emotion exists most starkly for me on the joy-gratitude-ennui-despair axis of emotion. It is not really a reflection of circumstance but really only the feeling of being—of living but not Living; of passing time but not boredom; of presence but not focus. And it is not a Bad Thing—not every moment can or should be emphatic and passionate and intense. I also don't want to give the impression that Neutral Emotion is peaceful or meditative when in fact it is an unstable equilibrium; after a push toward emotion it is difficult to return to Neutrality. Although is returning to Neutrality ever really desired? Don't we truly want to feel content or accepting or resolute? In fact, how can we even know that Neutral Emotion is an emotion in itself and not just the total, abject lack of emotion? How can we even know whether there is a difference between those two ideas if annoyance can be promoted into anger which can be promoted into rage? How much Neutral Emotion is OK to feel before we should be concerned? Unfortunately I don't have the answers to these questions, and furthermore there is only so much I can say on this topic. I invite you, the reader, to explore your own unfeeling feelings. As a consolation, and given that this post is entirely disinterested, below are some thoughts I've had in the past week or two that might be more fun to think about. - I feel partially like I've been posting less partially due to an increase in Neutral Emotion. Like I am feeling less intensely about things overall so I'm less inclined to write about them. But not in a depressed way? - As I am writing this I am kind of worried that people will read it and think "this is such a dumb unaware 'boy' post. this idiot is just not in touch with his emotions." but in true 'boy' manner I am posting it anyway!!! - I am currently ghosting my bad therapist and honestly sometimes I feel like I should really be spending more time feeling my feelings instead of thinking about them. a loss for Neutral Emotion to be sure (and also for my therapist). Does anyone want to refer me to a good therapist - If you get hit by a city bus or fall through one of those sidwealk grates do you get a big payout?? I always assumed yes but maybe the answer is no now that I think about it - Last night I had a stress dream where I was hosting a music festival in a hotel room and famous people like thundercat and sandra bullock were coming but someone was supposed to bring CDJs and a mixer but they only actually brought 1.5 CDJs and no mixer and I couldn't figure out how to allow for DJing to happen and thundercat was already there but honestly was being so chill about the whole thing but I was still stressed. - Automatic toilets and the story of Orpheus are kind of the closest things we have to quantum mechanics in the macro-world