Why be sensitive at all?

Do you consider sensitivity a weakness or a strength?

In the last few weeks, I met some new people, men, who were telling me about themselves, and opening up to me about their interests, joys, and ways of life. Men who liked to write, to create art, to build deep connections with people. And every now and then while they opened up, they would say things like, "I'm sorry, I'm quite sentimental, it might be weird", "I don't want it to be awkward, I am quite emotional", etc. I urged them to please continue and stop giving me these disclaimers, but I was furious to hear these things at all. Then more recently, I met a trans-person who was going through a breakup and they said, "What's the point in loving hard when they all end anyway?" That is what motivated me to write this piece - this one's for those who need to hear why it's a virtue and not a weakness.

What is sensitivity really? I would call it a combination of quickness of perception and depth of experience. It is enough for us to talk about the 'lows', the suffering, since nobody thinks being sensitive to joys and pleasures is a problem.

First, let me address those who pride themselves on being unemotional and beyond catching feelings.

Who are these people who guilt-trip others for being sentimental, who think love is painful, most often fruitless, therefore not worth the time or effort, who think emotions waste time because they tie you down from being 'productive'? Pity those people, because they never live. They are like sheep grazing with their heads constantly bent down to the ground, who never realize that there is a sky full of stars.

The drama of life is a psychological, emotional roller-coaster. Some people give up a seat in this ride for a seat in the audience. They celebrate and rejoice in the highs and victories of other people, find relief and entertainment in watching others get hurt and wrecked by the ride, but they live their lives entirely second-hand. The sources of their joys and sorrows are not in themselves, and they spend years, even decades living passively, comforting themselves that they have avoided emotional disasters until they face a tremendous crisis later on in life - that they have not really lived. They are the people who fear death because they have always feared LIFE. Then they scramble to find a logical, intellectual meaning that makes life worth living, but it takes all these years to realize that there is nothing to gain from impotent rationality and objective pursuits, that in the end, only sentiments give us fulfillment.

But these people are rare. We would not be in this epidemic of insensitivity, of soullessness, as I call it, if not for the great majority of people who are truly sensitive and emotional, who have been conditioned to think that these are weaknesses.

To some extent, the individual is to blame, because a certain attitude to life is necessary, one that does not seek an end in every means, a purpose that justifies going through lows. The tragedy of the modern era is that it drills down the message that "the purpose of this one life we have, is to be happy", and this it does through the vast apparatus of social media by widespread examples of people who are happy, productive, successful, etc. Therefore, every time life deals an emotional blow and we fall into a large horrible pitfall that could have been avoided (as is usual in voluntary pursuits such as love or ambition), the immediate response to such an event is that we have 'lost' time, this is not how it is supposed to be, that it is almost an act of injustice by the universe. And the sensitive person who feels this intensely, looks around at those who don't have such strong responses and concludes that this quality is the bane of their existence.

A change in attitude such as, "the purpose of life is not to be happy but to feel alive" brings this suffering into the equation, as a reminder of how painful it is to be a human in this world. And this pain, only when felt in all its crushing intensity, has the potential to awaken the senses to the joys and pleasures too, because the pain becomes a part of the window of our experience, awakening us to all our senses. How would you be satisfied with those little things, if you don't feel them strongly? That is why there is no reason to love, except for the sake of being in love. No reason to take risks except for the sense of adventure, for going through that whole ride.

But it is impossible to discount the much bigger problem - that even if someone were to have strong emotional responses or suffer intensely, society does not provide the space or time for it. Our self-esteem and survival in this industrial, capitalist society are so tied to our productivity that there is simply no time for leisure and reflection. Intense emotions unprocessed, suppressed, or repressed, become ticking bombs we cover up with flimsy clothes in our attempt to hide, escape and forget an impending implosion, in order to carry on with our lives. Except, we can never really go on. And then the suppression causes a constant, additional layer of suffering, while repression (which is an unconscious act of burying feelings) usually leads to serious mental health complications. I do not think people realize what a terrible nightmare this is: disgruntled, frustrated, emotionally starved people even in the privileged, intellectual sections of society burdening people of the working class who go through the same things but do not even have the means, the time, or the tools to express these feelings.

But these are issues arising from obstacles to being authentic versions of ourselves, whether imposed by society or the self. I will focus here on an oft-unspoken point: What do we really gain from being sensitive? Beyond a fulfilling experience of life, intact with emotions, sentiments, and a host of complex feelings that makes our life rich and colourful, is there anything we get by really feeling things deeply?

The answer is yes. We stand to gain everything.

Let us start with the most pressing question at any point in life: How should we live? The novelist Jonathan Foer laments,"I regret that it takes a lifetime to learn how to live." The only way to answer the question, if we have the necessary means, is to expose ourselves to a wide range of perspectives, enrich our lives with different experiences, and then figure out a set of principles by which we chart out our lives. And there is just not enough time to do all this, right? So how does being sensitive help at all?

"The personal life deeply lived, expands into truths beyond itself." - Anais Nin

Imagine an encounter with pain. A person with a shallowness of experience simply feels 'hurt' in that event. A person who is more sensitive immediately becomes aware of the precise source and nature of that pain. A person who is extremely sensitive feels a pain so deep that it penetrates all the layers of the soul and strikes at the very center of pain itself, opening up the consciousness to the universal nature of pain and suffering. And that is the extraordinary power of sensitivity - it is the gateway to a larger consciousness, an awareness of reality that has gone beyond a seemingly subjective, personal experience. Not only does it provide us with profound truths by direct realization, but it reveals the bedrock of experience upon which we relate to other people beyond the diversity in differences at the surface.

Any experience imparts us with wisdom, only when there is a depth of experience that reveals both its personal and impersonal nature. All the principles that matter - what we value, what affects us, how we treat each other - are discovered earlier on in life, by those among us who are sensitive. And the 'price' that they pay is the intensity of their emotions. On the outside, it appears that they are losing time being held down by emotions, but we discount the illumination, the lasting lessons we learn at a lesser cost to the future. The problem I find everywhere is that sensitive people are insecure about their sensitivity. It's a result of an incessant outward glance and a lack of trust and grounding in one's own experience. It is difficult to share personal experiences of love or loss to prove this point, so let me give a cheap, practical example that still works.

A friend who is 4-5 years older, used to be a party animal. Between the age of 21-29, he used to go out clubbing, drinking, smoking, etc. frequently and had this image that he was living the life. At 29, tired of this lifestyle, he told me in a defensive, mocking tone, "You're also gonna come to the same point, you're just starting out :P But now I need peace, I've seen it all." But I didn't need to waste years of my life to come here. As someone who loves clubs, the dance floor, loud music, and parties, it took me only two long nights at the age of 23 to come to the same conclusion. Because I was deeply sensitive not only to the thrill and excitement but also to the emptiness and the superficial fun. So who has wasted time here? If I wasn't sensitive enough, I would've bought into the insecurity of thinking there is so much more to experience. It is the same in every case: seeing people who rack up body count when I know that sex without some emotional connection is not fulfilling to me, seeing people who earn loads and splurge on vacations when I know that such a lifestyle is not fulfilling to me.

I use the word 'know' because we always worry that we don't know enough - and sensitivity is the difference between merely feeling and knowing. We do not trust the depth of our emotions because we don't handle them right. This brings me to the most important point - is sensitivity alone enough?

No, we need two more things that convert intense experiences into convictions and wisdom - a resilience to sustain intensity and a keen sense of self-awareness.

Most of the toxic shaming, especially aimed at men, targets sensitivity, when it is fragility that needs to be examined critically. A fragile person is not only sensitive but, as a next step, does anything to shut down those deep, disturbing feelings. So fragility may even be defined as the inability to endure intense emotions, especially fear, pain, discomfort, turmoil, and conflict. That is not only a hindrance to an adventurous personal life, but has terribly destructive consequences in all social relations. How many women are constantly complaining that men have inflated, fragile egos? How many people call out insensitive apolitical ones who can't 'handle all that negativity'? How many of us find it so hard to navigate abusive relationships because people will do anything to evade the discomfort of truth and accountability? Because sensitivity, being in touch with your own true feelings, and putting yourself in the shoes of another, are necessary conditions for an intimate, healthy coexistence, where we are not abusive to each other. What we collectively need is not more tips on how to avoid intense emotions, but how to endure them. The stoics and all male mythical heroes are people with tremendous grit which, by definition, is an ability to endure deep, destabilizing distress. Such a grit is found in abundance among women in everyday life, but men are too full of themselves to be inspired by people of other genders (and most often insensitive to see it at all!)

The greatest affirmation of life is to be deeply sensitive and go through intense, emotional turbulence. But without a conscious perception of our feelings, a strong, critical self-assessment, a constant dialogue with ourselves when we are most sensitive, every intense experience is a giant, speeding train that runs over us but not through us. We lose the chance to assimilate this experience into our own system in healthy ways. Because every major experience always stays inside us, whether we like it or not, but we risk being unaware of how it stays in us. Only that can help us stay rooted and secure in the present. And nobody is innately self-conscious. Those who do, discover it at a certain point in life, and those who are sensitive, chance upon it earlier through deeper experiences.

Then it is sad to see how many are uncertain if this is a virtue at all, even beyond the social conditioning; how many are held back by the lows and never see the glorious light. The hardest thing is to trust your own experience when you see a mind-boggling diversity in lifestyle outside. But tell me, what else can you really count on? There is absolutely nothing else but the surety of our feelings to go through life. All of this is just to tell you that if you are sensitive, please be assured that it is a strength and learn to glean the best out of it.

A word on sensitive men

Recently, I was hanging out with a close friend, another (cis-het) man, and we were discussing complex feelings, which he usually struggles to articulate. He cut his point short and asked me, "Have you seen Titanic?" I said yes, suddenly feeling psyched up, knowing where this was going. "There is a line in it - a woman's heart is an ocean of secrets" and he showed me a screenshot of that scene. Spot on! I knew this was coming. "Yeah, do you think it describes you?" I asked, and he said yes, exactly! In all these years, I had never met another man with whom the same line resonated, until now. That is the only line that stuck with me since the very first time I watched it, because I instantly felt it described me too.

Throughout my life, I have struggled to connect with men, because I have always craved deep, rich, and vibrant emotional connections and men are so dramatic and emotional, and yet they always hover on the surface, never revealing their depths. The great trouble is that it is impossible to communicate the 'fulfillment' in being sensitive to anyone - they just have to experience it themselves. It is a constant fight to be assured and authentic in our own ways. Some other time, I will share my thoughts on how social norms affect men's quality of experiences. Now I just want to say that if you are a sensitive, soft, or emotional man, you are not feminine, nor is being feminine a problem (the whole concept of masculinity and femininity needs an overhaul). You have just unlocked a doorway to spiritual satisfaction, and you owe it to yourself, other men, and all women to enter that door and keep it open for others.