Once we recognise that events are impermanent and feelings are transient, we will have reached that stage called equanimity. We neither cling to positive feelings nor do we flinch from negative ones. Each of them is experienced and each of them, released

You would love to be a perfect sibling but what do you do with the envy that surges within you at your ‘better loved’ sister? You would love to be the perfect offspring but you cannot forgive your father for not permitting you to go to art school. Suma Varughese reflects on grappling with volatile emotions

What do you do with feelings? This is a very fundamental question and one that I have been grappling with for such a long time. What is it about feelings that lacerate us with such anguish? Well, there is the inescapable fact that few of us have control over them. They waylay us like bandits at any time of the day or night and before we know it, we are frothing with rage, writhing with longing, smouldering with jealousy, sagging with sorrow or shivering with fright. Oh, yes, there are good feelings too, but although they are part of the problem, they don’t cripple us to the same extent that negative ones do.

So there we are, awash with feelings that all too often dictate our state of mind, thoughts, words and acts. Feelings are really a form of possession, so completely do they have us under their grip. It is hard to turn the other cheek when you are smarting with the reproof your boss has dealt you in front of your colleagues. It is hard to love your husband when he has confessed to flirting with a mutual friend. It is difficult to remain unmoved by the traffic, the heat or the hole in your new outfit.

Life throws situation after situation at us at the speed of a bullet. Rarely do we meet the challenge as we should and not give in to anger and pain. So the question is, how can we break free from their hold and regain our freedom to think and act as we choose to?

To begin with, the solution does not lie in indifference. Much as we may rebel against the grip of feelings, they are a barometer of our life force, sensitivity and caring. The more we feel, the greater is our capacity to experience life to the very depths of our being. To shield ourselves from pain by resorting to indifference is a short-term solution that eventually only causes more trouble. As one who has spent a long sabbatical in the region of indifference, I can tell you there is nothing more terrible than to be anaesthetised from feeling. Not to feel another’s pain, or even one’s own, is tantamount to being buried alive.