The freedom of my feelings

It is amazing how many emotions and feelings we human beings can harbor. I have always thought that people who have the heart of a human are those who enjoy life to the fullest because they don't keep any nice feelings to themselves. They don't even think about the possibility of doing so. The true essence of a human being is not only to feel joy, love, peace, but also to transmit it. It is a reciprocal act, we receive beautiful things in life and we feel alive, full, but we are also in charge of giving all the beautiful things that in a moment overwhelm our being.

One of the most outstanding characteristics that define a minimalist person is nothing more and nothing less than freedom. We are free from paradigms, schemes and patterns that come from society and that pleasure we feel for not being slaves of an indifferent and apathetic yoke gives us happiness. However, sometimes we are slaves of ourselves when we do not display the beautiful feelings we experience.

Each generation has lived a different era, there are people who have been raised in an environment where love is manifested only with deeds and manifestations of affection died, perhaps because of grief, fear or any other negative thing. This is terrible because we cannot say that living this way we are free. I understand that many have been marked by that time and that it is almost impossible for them to say "I love you", give a hug, congratulate a friend or relative with pride, however, the lack of these things produces unhappiness because it tacitly reminds us that we are deprived of freedom.

Surely if this is your case, you will have many arguments to justify your way of being and I respect you with all my heart. However, I invite you not to keep the expressions of affection, although they are very nice, if they are not displayed they can suffocate you. The less we keep emotionally the happier we will be, so minimalism applies in many aspects of our life, even in feelings.

A few years ago, I was incapable of expressing affection. My dad is extremely affectionate but my mom is not. Unfortunately, she was raised in an unloving environment and this pattern has led her to be a bit cold about showing affection. My mom loves me, she has shown it to me in many ways but I have always wanted her to give me a hug and tell me she loves me. Without realizing it, I was also adopting that pattern of behavior, not telling my dad or my siblings and other family members how I felt about them, until there came a point in my life when I felt like I was going to explode.

It was then that I realized that I was doing exactly what for years had been hurting me, so I changed. This change was not overnight, it took time for me to externalize so many beautiful things because I felt sorry for myself but with effort I managed to be free. I literally let my feelings overflow; I started hugging my mom, dad, my siblings, family and friends. Believe me, when I began to express my feelings I felt a majestic emancipation. I felt that I was finally me, I was a human being in the full sense of the word, I was free.

Since then I don't keep my feelings bottled up, I make love to babies in front of anyone, I hug my friends who are already old and tell them how much I appreciate them. Not repressing my beautiful feelings has brought me a lot of happiness and even though my mom is still cold in that sense, I don't mind because I go and hug her.

I will not deprive myself of being in my mother's arms just because she has not overcome the pattern she adopted as a child and I will not wait for her to overcome it to feel close to her. As long as she doesn't do it, I will always do it because the more I do it, the happier I feel because I am free, my feelings and expressions of affection are no longer caged.