So this is the new year, and what do you want? Have you already made your resolutions, or have you given up hope that you could change your life? While every one of us has the ability to realise our dreams, most never do. I think it's time to ask why, says Shalini Sinha.
Whatever else we've achieved in this society (bounties of technology and information), we've lost a basic human skill to handle difficult feelings. As a result, we remain limited in our potential, creating an unjust, confusing world where people feel hopeless, powerless, and emotion is attacked as destructive.
Fear keeps us in cages, twisting our thinking and making the status quo an acceptable standard. It's not even a practical fear related to an immediate trauma, but a fear of feeling at all.
To go after our dreams, we must decide to feel everything - insecurity, humiliation, loneliness, rejection, failure, hopelessness, grief, remorse, loss and more. Are you up for it?
Following through on a decision while feeling is quite different to being led adrift by your feelings without thinking. Many of us say we've made a decision when we haven't.
A decision is a commitment, marked by determination. We say we'll do something - lose weight, stop smoking, get a job we like - but as soon as we feel frightened or worried, we stop.
Popular opinion on emotions is confusing. First, we're told that emotions signify lesser beings; that reasonable behaviour is feeling-free. Yet, as soon as a difficult emotion surfaces, we let it control us.
In fact, it's our emotions that make us so wonderfully human. When we understand this, fear can be a constructive force: indicating where people have been hurt or an injustice has occurred, fuelling our integrity.
Instead, we have emotionally disabled ourselves.
Realising our dreams will require us to embrace, rather than avoid, our full range of feelings. This means rethinking our involvement in mind-numbing activities: comfort eating, immobility, social and anti-social drugs, thoughtless television and consumerism to name a few.
In a year overshadowed by war, spin, scandal and violence (no wonder we're feeling powerless), the Special Olympics gave us some hope. Still, we could have learned a lot more.
When interviewing several trainers of Team Ireland, I asked the question "Why do you give your time?"
The responses included phrases like, "these people" have "so many disappointments" in their lives, these Games make such a difference "to them".
With the spotlight of Ireland shining on people with learning disabilities, we still managed to see them as achieving "despite what they are missing", blinded to what they might have that we do not possess. Many emotional gurus participated in those Games. All we could see was how we were "giving them a chance".
When I was young, a class of people with learning disabilities was introduced in my school. Despite intentions, they remained isolated from the other students. Perhaps because I knew what it was like to be an outsider, I was asked to spend a few hours each week with the class. I helped students tie their shoes, eat their lunch and do activities.
As the only black child in the school, I was shy and afraid to express myself completely. It seemed to me that those students were not.
I found them honest, insightful and lacking pretence. They didn't conform just because it was easier than feeling. They weren't afraid to cry when things were hard or show real excitement when things went well. They never lied about what they felt or saw, or who they were.
It seemed to me they weren't afraid to be different, and that taught me a lot. If valued completely, some people with learning disabilities could give us useful guidance on how to fix our world. Instead, we marginalise them and their point of view.
You can't learn without facing your fears. You can memorise, be rigid in your accumulation of facts and believe you're right, but you can't grow or become smarter. Worst of all, you can't trust people if you can't feel. You become isolated.
This is why more men die earlier of stress-related diseases, or attempt and succeed at suicide - not because they are disadvantaged in the system. On the contrary, they gain more privilege and benefits than most. It is because being at the centre of the system is anti-human. The system is anti-human. Protecting and defending it requires us to stay numb. In return, it exploits our resource and keeps us captive in our boxes. (Feel like the Matrix?)
But, if you're ready to go after your dreams and feel it all, there are a few essential elements for success. First, you can't do it alone. If you could have transformed your life alone before now, you would have.
Social support has been the essence of human success. So, identify a few people who encourage you, believe in you and are willing to keep you moving forward when things start to feel awful. No one who will take care of you, but rather a small personal army to remind you that you can achieve what you want, and a few tough feelings won't be what hold you back.
Second, prepare yourself. Things might get tough and you needn't get lost there. What are you facing? Rejection, loneliness, numbness, hopelessness, isolation, powerlessness, feeling stupid, all of the above? If you really go after it, you might start sweating, shaking, crying, laughing uncontrollably, or even yawning a lot in public. These are natural responses to difficult emotions, confirming that you've broken through numbness and complacency and gained access to what's been holding you back all these years. This is when your army kick-in, to encourage you to persevere, be who you want to be and have the life you've always wanted.
If you come through it, there's no looking back. If you don't, may you be brave in the attempt. You will have taken on a fear that allowed you to forget your power and significance, believing that no one outside yourself would really stand by you. You will be one less person contributing to a whole world of bad structures, misdirected policies and injustices.
So, this is a new year. What do you want?