F for Feelings

Two weeks ago, I committed a serious, heinous crime.

Something so horrible, I’m surprised it wasn’t the leading story on the news.

I

Missed

A

Homework

Assignment.

OH, the HORROR! It felt as if I had torn off a part of my SOUL. You know that part in Inside Out where Joy and Sadness watch helplessly as Riley’s personality literally crumbles to pieces? That’s how it felt. Like my School Island started to creak and groan, then toppled into the darkness of the Memory Dump, joining all of the other stuff I used to care about. Like Webkinz. I was obsessed with those things.

To be clear, I didn’t write an assignment on time for a class and as a result fell behind the others. So when the professor starts by asking everyone to comment on each other’s assignments, I sit there, assignment-less and therefore comment-less.

I freaked out. I had to excuse myself to the bathroom and do some breathing exercises and pray and try to wipe away the tears and any signs that I had lost control of my emotions.

Let me put things in perspective. I was one of those neurotic straight-A kids who cried when she got a B on a test in her high school chemistry class. The very idea of getting anything lower than an A gave me anxiety. (A for Anxiety!) I was involved in a million clubs, was a stellar performer in speech and debate (I literally wrote a speech about stars), and not only a valedictorian, but also the keynote speaker in my graduating high school class.

My perfectionism only worked for so long, though.

When I came here, everyone was just as Smart™ and Talented™ as I was. I also gradually became inundated with the Impending Responsibilities of Adult Life which necessitate that we must All Give Up Our Dreams In Order To Survive. (I started paying taxes last year. It wasn’t great. And I was actually a year late, too, so don’t forget to pay your taxes, guys.)

The reality was that I had been so consumed in my desire to achieve the BEST I could at EVERYTHING that I had neglected the far more important achievement: that of emotional balance and security, healthy relationships with loved ones and family members, mental and spiritual and physical health and wellbeing, some common sense/knowledge about the real world, etc.

Sadly, a lot of us have to deal with this. At some point we have to come to terms with our lives and realize what we lack (or be slapped in the face with the negative emotional repercussions of our decisions, which is pretty much what happened to me).

In this article, researchers found that having more extrinsic goals such as the pursuit of wealth or an attractive appearance led to decreased health and wellbeing in subjects. In contrast, those who pursued more intrinsic goals such as bettering relationships with loved ones were shown to have better health and wellbeing. That makes sense. I mean, every culture must have some sort of wise saying that denounces materialistic goals and commends the improvement of the internal self.

For the most part, my report card isn’t horrendous. Yeah, 5000 years from now when some unfortunate archeologist is given the privilege to dig through my cat-print-covered belongings, she’s going to find this rotten old piece of paper and maybe she’ll be like, “Oof, what happened there?” (By “there”, I’m talking about the string of B’s and C’s I’m probably going to get in the last two semesters of my college career)

There would be a whopper of a story behind that report card. But I wouldn’t be there to explain it to her. Maybe she would take it to her teammates and then somehow it would end up in a museum of 21st century artefacts, probably in a glass case next to an embalmed fidget spinner. If I were able to teleport myself into the future so I could tell the museum staff to put a title card next to my grades with “F for FEELINGS” written in 16 pt. Helvetica Neue, I would. But as we have not invented time-travel machines yet, I am sorry to say that that might never become a reality.

The point I’m getting at is a cliché one. Basically, what you have and what you’ve done doesn’t define who you are and who you will be. Yes, you should work hard to achieve excellence, but you should work even harder to build relationships and connections with other people, to become aware of and able to control your emotions and feelings, and to ultimately leave this world a more joyful place.

Because what’s so bad about one missed homework assignment?

Nothing really.