A few days ago, I watched a video talking about embarrassment, and something about it made a strange click in my head. It was talking about how much energy we spend trying not to feel embarrassed. We avoid situations that could make us uncomfortable, we try to hide embarrassment when it happens, we replay things in our heads wishing we had said something different or behaved differently. Sometimes we even stop ourselves from doing things because we are scared of looking stupid. And while I was listening, I suddenly thought: why? Embarrassment is an emotion. An uncomfortable one, of course, but still an emotion. Why do we treat it almost like an enemy? Why are we so obsessed with defeating it, avoiding it or making it disappear, instead of accepting that sometimes in life we are simply going to feel embarrassed?

That thought stayed in my head, and after a while I started thinking about how many other emotions we treat in exactly the same way. Sadness, loneliness, missing someone, grief. There are so many feelings that we immediately classify as something negative that needs to be fixed. As soon as they arrive, we start fighting them. We tell ourselves that we shouldn’t feel like this anymore, that we need to move on, distract ourselves, think positively, find something else, stop thinking about it. We seem to have this idea that feeling better is always the goal, and that the faster we get there, the better we are at dealing with life. But I’m starting to wonder if that’s actually true.

Missing someone is a perfect example. When someone leaves our life and we miss them, it can feel almost like the feeling itself is telling us to do something. Maybe I should call them. Maybe I should go back. Maybe I made the wrong decision. Maybe if I miss them this much, it means they are supposed to be in my life. But perhaps missing someone doesn’t mean any of those things. Maybe missing someone simply means that person was important to us. Maybe I can miss someone terribly and still know that they shouldn’t be in my life. I can miss the good moments, the intimacy, the conversations, the habits, the version of the future that I imagined, and still know that leaving was the right decision. The feeling doesn’t have to change the decision. Missing someone is a feeling, not an instruction.

And perhaps grief works in the same way. We often talk about “getting over” things, as if grief were an obstacle standing between us and the person we are supposed to become afterwards. But maybe there is nothing to get over. Maybe there is just something to go through. When something ends, we don’t only lose the thing itself. We can lose routines, expectations, plans, possibilities and versions of ourselves that existed inside that situation. Of course that creates an empty space. Of course sometimes that space hurts. Why should I expect myself to immediately fill it? Why should sadness automatically mean that something has gone wrong?

I think we are so used to trying to fix everything that eventually we start trying to fix our emotions too. If something is uncomfortable, we want to make it comfortable. If something hurts, we want to make the pain disappear. If we feel embarrassed, we want to hide. If we feel lonely, we want to fill the space. If we miss someone, we want to stop missing them. But maybe some emotions don’t need a solution. Maybe sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is recognise them without immediately reacting to them. Yes, today I am sad. Yes, today I miss someone. Yes, that situation embarrassed me. Yes, this hurts. And then allow that feeling to exist without turning it into an emergency.

I’m trying to learn this now. Some days will be good and some days won’t. Some days I might feel strong and completely sure about where I’m going, and the next day something small might bring back a memory and make me incredibly sad. Those two days don’t cancel each other out. I don’t have to fight the second one just because I preferred the first. Maybe I can simply let myself experience both. I can create, work, laugh, make plans and be excited about the future, and I can also have moments when something hurts. They can exist in the same life.

Maybe accepting an emotion doesn’t mean surrendering to it. Maybe it simply means giving ourselves permission to be human for a while. We don’t have to obey every feeling, but perhaps we don’t have to fight every feeling either. Some things hurt because they mattered. Some people are missed because they were important. Some endings make us sad even when we know they needed to happen. And some uncomfortable moments are simply part of being alive.

Not everything needs to be fixed. Not every uncomfortable feeling needs to disappear. Sometimes there is nothing wrong with us and nothing we need to do.

Sometimes we just have to feel it, let it stay for a while, and then let it pass.