Feelings are Like Sign Posts
Our feelings are sign posts helping us walk through life.
Your reaction to reading that line may have been quite non-chalant. Sure, makes sense. No big revelation there. But imagine if we truly believed it. What would the impact be?
I’m driving along the Turnpike and the signs direct me so I know which exit to get off and which ones to pass. Does it ever occur to me to change the sign? Put it in another location? Get mad at it because it says Rt. 21 and not Rt. 80? Do I ever pay attention to the font and wish it were different or get bothered that the signs are green?
Not really. Because I understand the purpose of the sign post: to get me from point A to point B. Can I miss the sign? Sure. Can I read the sign wrong? Sure. Can I get sidetracked to a different exit? Of course. But that has nothing to do with the perfection of the sign’s purpose.
We don’t spend a lot of time getting mad at the sign posts because they are there to help us drive through life.
Yet, we get so bent out of shape about our feelings. We try to change them, ignore them or control them because we think they should be different.
But what if they are just sign posts helping us walk through life? True, we may miss the message, read it wrong or get sidetracked for a bit, but there is no need to change our feelings. The font, the color, the placement is all perfectly given to us by G-d. Listen to them. Our feelings are valuable information guiding us on our journey through life.
