The Things We Are Not Allowed to Feel
I have always struggled with morality. Not that I am immoral from a societal standpoint. I am amoral—not because I have no morals, but because I don't see morality as absolute. I do have values and principles, and I follow them, but I am not rigid about them. For me, the person matters more than the values we hold. For me, the person matters more than the values we hold.
I know I shouldn’t fall in love with someone, but there’s no way in hell I can control who I fall in love with. All I can control is what I do after that. Morals are only useful in the second step. The first, where you fall for someone, is uncontrollable. I can blame myself for falling for someone, but there is absolutely no control over how I feel.
If my friend has made a blunder, I wouldn’t be discussing ethics with him. I would first help him out, sort out his issues, and then maybe give him a lecture about what shouldn’t have been done. The first instinct is to protect, to help. Only the person matters; the morals are irrelevant here.
I do not have an answer to this conundrum. I believe I will always grapple with this question throughout my life. Because it’s not that I don’t know what the right thing to do is in the moment. I always know what is expected of me, even when it doesn’t align with what I want. I do the right things according to societal norms.
But oftentimes, my heart is not in sync with my mind. The heart wants what the heart wants. It feels and feels and feels, as if it has no control over itself. I never act on those feelings, so nobody has to know. But I know there is a contradiction within me, and because of that, I have stopped preaching morality to people. I stay quiet.
There are a lot of things I have felt that I am not “allowed” to feel from a societal perspective, but I have no control over them. My happiness comes from indulging in those feelings. I know I shouldn’t act on them, and I don’t, which takes care of my obligations. I guess that’s what morality was constructed for: to make sure we never act on our desires.
And I guess they did succeed in controlling a person like me, even after thousands of years.