I haven’t made any videos in a while. I went to the Berlin Film Festival — twice, actually, two weekends in a row — and then to Laos and Vietnam. I wanted to make videos about those trips, but the urge just wasn’t strong enough. So I didn’t.
But now I want to make something different. Not a travel video, but a series about a topic that’s a little unusual: emotions. Feelings.
It started in Vietnam. Whenever I visit a city, I always find my way to a bookstore. I was browsing and came across a book called Connect, about building exceptional relationships. One of its central ideas is that we should express how we feel — and that we shouldn’t ignore our feelings, even when they seem small.
Say you’re talking to a friend and they make a comment that makes you uncomfortable. You feel slightly annoyed, or something you can’t even name. You have a choice: talk to the friend about it, or let it go. Personally, I almost always let it go.
The book says this is unhealthy. When you don’t address these small moments, your feelings don’t just disappear. They build up. And then one day, you snap — maybe not even at that friend, but at someone else, at a seemingly random time. It’s the result of emotions accumulating because you refused to acknowledge them.
This reminded me of another book I’d read: Nonviolent Communication. Emotions are central to that book too — when conflict happens, we should be able to express what the other person did and how it made us feel. I went back and reread it.
And then an important realization hit me: I don’t always know how I feel.
I don’t think that’s uncommon. As a guy — a grown-up man, an Asian man, no less — I’ve spent a lot of my life putting my feelings aside. I know it’s a stereotype, but unfortunately, for me, it’s true.
I can recall many instances where I felt something while talking to someone and just ignored it. Or felt something when I was alone and went to the gym to make myself feel better, without ever confronting or naming what I was actually feeling. In a way, I’ve become numb to my own emotions. And I think that’s been detrimental to many areas of my life.
I think this happens to a lot of us. The way we grew up — maybe our parents didn’t pay enough attention to how we felt, didn’t acknowledge our feelings, or weren’t even around, like so many left-behind children in China. I’m not here to criticize parents. They did the best they could. But I think we should face our past.
Because our feelings weren’t acknowledged, they weren’t given any importance. And slowly, we stopped giving them importance too. The “important” things took over — better grades, a good university, a good job, enough money. We went through many emotions along the way, but we put them aside because we deemed them unimportant.
I think we were wrong.
A few days ago, I was on the web page of a course I’m interested in taking. I hesitated a lot. I wasn’t sure if I should book it. And then I realized there was an emotion there — an emotion affecting my decision. Once I named it, I felt much better.
Naming our emotions is a useful skill. And for me, it’s often very hard. So in this series, I’ll try to name a few of mine and talk about them. It won’t be easy, but I think it’s worthwhile.
I think a lot of people, just like me, have trouble facing their emotions. Maybe this is an opportunity to face them together.
I want to end with a question: How are you feeling right now? Can you name it? Can you describe it in detail?
I think that’s very important.