I feel like a reoccurring theme in my college career has been this one about feelings and whether or not to make decisions about them. There is this duality in the importance of the feelings. People think that they should only listen to their feelings in very specific situations like when you know other people feel the same.

In terms of relationships, I guess I kind of agree? Like obviously don't go pushing your feelings onto someone who doesn't reciprocate, but also don't bottle up all that emotion. In my experience, not letting yourself truly feel the extent of your emotion leads to many more issues than expressing them does. Will you have to deal with a few awkward moments here and there? Hell yeah, but in terms of your general health and the health of your relationships what's a couple of awkward moments in the grand scheme of life?

In terms of everything else, I just don't get it. Why wouldn't you listen to yourself?

I recently started asking my friends what they thought makes someone a bad person and one of the most profound answers I got was that a bad person is someone who kills their conscience. I think that is a very telling answer. I'm sure everyone has killed their conscience at some point in their lives, but those people who do it time and time again are not only disrespecting themselves but the people around them by not living their truth.

Your feelings are the biggest tell-tale signs of what your truth is, so why is it so socially acceptable to just ignore them? Why do people live their whole lives doing things they hate? Because it is more practical?

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of living for the practicality of life. I want to live in hope and happiness where I look forward to every new moment and every new lesson. This idea of living an "ok" life is just as bad to me as living a bad life. I want my life to be extraordinary. I don't want this mediocre, robotic, "I'm fine" kind of life it seems like society force-feeds us into believing is the only option you have to get by. I feel like we owe ourselves more than that.

Even if every moment can't be amazing, even if we have to be a little realistic, the very least we can do is look at this life and be like "let me make the most of this."

When people kill their emotion, they essentially become this photocopy of every other mindless person stuck in the rat-race of life. If we all wake up a little, we can empower each other and rise together.

I know this is a really idealistic, maybe even a naive way of looking at life, but change begins with what seems impossible.