Feelings Are Not Truth

Says the Stoic Philosophers — and Shakespeare

Photo by Hassan Sherif on Unsplash

We live in an age that if we feel something it must be true. And there we have our truth — ‘This is my truth,’ we say indulgently. Consequently, we need to make it plural. We all have our truths, if powered by our fleeting and ephemeral emotions. And if we have all these truths in so much abundance, it stands to reason that some will be in conflict with some other. So there becomes no real or abiding truth. It is entirely relative to the individual feeling being expressed. Any notion of truth becomes devalued.

Feeling something doesn’t make it true. And that is the real truth. We have become confused with having an emotion sincerely felt and expressed, and equating this with truth. Something truly felt is not the truth. We have confused emotional truth with fact.

Any truth must stand on firmer ground than our own shifting sands of emotion. It needs to be tested by reason and logic. It must be supported by evidence. This type of rationale is not consistent with feeling. They are on opposite sides of the spectrum. We should nurture the habit of interrogating and challenging our feelings and emotions under the cold light of rational inquiry so we may protect ourselves and our mental health. Although they are philosophical opposites, as with the gods Apollo and Dionysus — the former…