Ran asks: ‘Why do you care about your feelings?’ A daft question – aren’t the two synonymous? I look them up in Chambers. The definition for ‘to care’ is like a found poem:
‘To be anxious; to be inclined;
To be concerned; to mind;
To have affection, fondness or regard for;
To provide for,
Watch over,
Look after.’

The one for feelings is more prosaic:
‘Consciousness of pleasure or pain; an impression received physically or mentally; tenderness; emotion; sensibility; susceptibility.’
So, why should we be anxious, or concerned, or mind about our consciousness of pleasure or pain? Well, we just are, or, I just am. If we’re not anxious etc etc, does it really count as pleasure or pain? Maybe anxious isn’t the right word. Let’s say ‘emotionally affected’. But that gets circular, doesn’t it? Doesn’t emotionally affected effectively mean the same as ‘feeling’? So, it’s a tautology. I care about my feelings because of the way they make me feel.
One of the aims of meditation, though, is to be able to observe your feelings without engaging with them. So, in the mountain meditation you sit like a mountain while the feelings which pass through your mind are like the weather which blows around the mountain but doesn’t really affect it. I remember reading or hearing somewhere (though I can’t remember where or when) a distinction between ‘feelings’ and ‘emotions’, on the lines of, feelings are the sensations which you feel (obviously), but emotions are the way you react to them, and you can make a conscious choice as to how you will react.
One of the phrases we use in the loving kindness meditation is ‘May I/he/she/they/all living beings be free from suffering’. In one sense, this is nonsense, because the inevitability of suffering is the First Noble Truth (‘shit happens’). So maybe what it means is freedom in the sense of consciously detaching yourself from experiencing suffering, not in a callous way, but as Bob Marley says: ‘Free yourself from mental slavery/None but ourselves can free our minds’.
But who can do this, except maybe the Buddha? And anyway, yesterday I didn’t ‘feel’ inclined to detach myself from my suffering, the way I chose to deal with it was to write it all out, and thanks to the kind people who responded gently. And thanks too to Ran for making me think, as he always does.