People have become addicted to what used to be a way for our bodies to express our inner state of being, to release what drains us so we can be connected to our deeper selves again.

Emotions.

Mainly through our news feed and our contacts’s posts on social media, we experience a chain of emotions, often contradictory, very quickly. You’ll read an article (or skim it because, come on… Ain’t nobody got time to read full articles anymore) about the little boy who jumped into the river to rescue a litter of pups and feel full of admiration and anger at the same time. You’re about to write an angry status about people who don’t respect animals when two seconds later, before your fingers have even started typing, you spot a video claiming that “this will make you cry” and you can’t help it.

You click.

After watching this video of a lion being reunited with the two men who looked after it when it was a cub, you are filled with joy. Your eyes are watery - the video was right. You click the “love” button underneath the video and move on to the next one. Because you want more. Or maybe you need more? Or is it simply that your eyes have already seen a new story they want to read and you have become a slave to your curiosity? Whatever the reason, you find yourself now reading an article about refugees and a deep sense of sadness submerges you like a tidal wave. You want to help but what can you do? The realisation that you are only one in 7.4 billion people on this planet and that, in the end, there isn’t much you can do on a big scale brings your sadness up a notch: you feel powerless. Those watery eyes have now turned into waterfalls.

In less than 10 minutes, you have already felt 5 different emotions. In real life, you might go through 5 in a day.

What do we find so satisfying, so addictive in going through all these different emotions within a short span of time? Have we become bored out of our minds with our daily life? Do we crave more drama, more battles, more “real” emotions and thus try and generate them through virtual “food”?

We have become emotion-bulimics. Because as we absorb all this information, we vomit it later as well. We spread the bad news, we ask our neighbors and friends if they heard about that white American guy who raped an unconscious girl and only got a 6-month jail sentence. No, your neighbor hadn’t heard about it but now they’re going to Google it. They’re going to “feed themselves” on information and then, later in turn, spread it themselves. Information is contagious and although it can be a good thing at times, it is also what keeps our world in a constant state of fear, unease and distrust.

The nature of an emotion, as a wave, is to come and go. If you let it in, you have to let it out. If you don’t let it out, it will eat you up inside and explode at some random moment. People have become obsessed with emotions and then they wonder why anxiety reigns over their mind.

Wake up. Your body doesn’t know what the fuck you’re doing. It responds to what you put inside it, whether it be actual food or “information-food”. It has to deal with it and process it. You give it junk, it will want to get rid of it because it is not useful to you. Stop feeding it crap, physically and mentally. Yes, the world is a fucked-up place but no, you don’t need to take part in every drama and debate because it will only fuel the fire to your own detriment. Focus on yourself. Listen to your body. Be involved in the life around you, because that is where your influence is the strongest. Spread joy and good news. Don’t selfishly share and spread negativity just because you need to let it out. There are better ways to do so. One of them is simple and easily accessible at all times:

Be present.

Pay attention to your surroundings instead of that voice - the ego - inside your head trying to monopolise your attention like a 3 year-old child walking by an ice-cream truck. “Please, please, please! Listen to me!” Tell it No. “No, I will not listen to you because that ice-cream is only going to make you hyper and craving more and more sugar and then you’re gonna throw up. You spoilt little brat.”

I shall leave you with this quote by Eckhart Tolle, who wrote the best-selling book The Power of Now :

“All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry - all forms of fear - are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.”