As the mother of three, there’s nothing more important to me than the future we leave behind for our children. You’ve probably heard all the stories about the ice caps melting, temperatures rising, and food running out. But there’s another precious resource that we’ve been draining at an alarming rate: feels. All of them.
We’re the first generation to feel more feels than our parents felt. But if we keep feeling feels as rapidly as we do now, there simply won’t be any feels left for our children to feel.
That very thought is making me feel some feels, so let’s slow this down.
In the 25 seconds it took you to reach this sentence, 17 people have felt all the feels. By the time you finish this piece, that number will creep up to 103. We simply don’t have the resources to keep feeling all the feels at this unsustainable rate.
Let me offer another harrowing statistic: the average American feels all the feels at least three times in one day. If that doesn’t scare you, consider the fact that this number quadruples whenever someone shares the video of Robin Williams visiting Koko the Gorilla.
Just bringing that video up got me dangerously close to feeling all the feels. I’m gonna have to take a moment.
Phew. Ok.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t watch uplifting videos about service animals comforting their owners or unlikely friendships between jocks and special needs students, but we have to be responsible about our feels when we do watch them. The same goes for Inside Out animated GIFs, quirky marriage proposals, and all other forms of highly shareable, heartwarming content.
Oh god. I just remembered that Upworthy video of “skeletons” dancing. It’s gonna be another minute.
Wow. That was close. Let’s try this again:
If we continue feeling at the current rate, our kids won’t even know what a feel is, let alone feel one.
How does THAT feel?
I’m not telling you to never feel a feel ever again. What I am telling you is to only feel one feel at a time. As feelers capable of feeling multiple feels, we have the responsibility to preserve feels so that our kids will know what it feels like to feel at least a single feel, perhaps even several feels.
As someone who’s felt all the feels, I have just as much work to do as the next person. But what we definitely can’t feel is entitled to keep feeling all the feels just because we’ve felt them before. So the next time you see a Facebook post from Buzzfeed Animals, I want you to ask yourself, “Is this feel I’m about to feel worth the all the feels my kids will never feel?”
