The weight of this sad time we must obey. Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.

These words from King Lear are very important to me, taking significance in my life at a very critical juncture decades ago when I was just learning about feelings. Shakespeare here taught me that it was important to just “let go” and value what I was feeling and deign to verbalize re these feelings.. This was critical as I had spent the first half of my life carefully monitoring myself and “thinking” and “saying” only what I “ought to say.” Yes, there were times when, like a kid with a new toy, I over did it and expressed some feelings at times when I should not have. But not often; and when I did, I usually did so with friends who were understanding.

And then for a few years I had the opportunity to facilitate this skill when I worked as a counselor, teaching young teen-agers the importance of their feelings and the value of expressing them, not only with words, but with art, music, and dance. It was very powerful to witness a young person make this discovery and watch many of them flourish. And I’ve seen the same phenomena with friends and acquaintances over the decades as the course of one’s life can grant maturity and with it the temerity to value one’s own subjective experience.

But I often overlook the first phrase of this Shakespearean observation—the weight of this sad time we must obey. Our culture’s disdain for feelings accumulates over the eons and becomes very “heavy.” And with this “heaviness” comes a profound sadness. And this sadness will be alleviated only when we “unpack our heart with words” (Shakespeare, “Hamlet”) and entertain the realm of “feeling which loosens rather than ties the tongue. (W. H. Auden.)