You’re with a group of friends having a great time, light music in the air and smiles everywhere. Then one of your friends gets a call from an ex and their mood completely changes. The smiles melt into frowns.

The music stops and the air gets thick. When another friend yells out, “Get out of your feelings! You’re bringing me down!” You start to ponder. How do you get out of your feelings and why would you want to?

It’s no secret that in today’s world, people can be unkind. Could this be due to an epidemic of no feeling? Artists have been producing songs describing how a lack of emotions can be viewed as positive trait. Back in 1977, the Sex Pistols came out with a song called “No Feelings.” Some of the lyrics are, “I got no emotions for anybody else. You better understand I’m in love with myself, myself, my beautiful self, no feelings for anybody else!” In this song, they also describe people showing them emotions and then responding with violence.

Most recently, the artist, PartyNextDoor, came out with a song called “No Feelings.” He describes a woman only looking for sex and money, then goes on to say he only gives her sex and money, no feelings. The rest of the song speaks about drug use. In my opinion, it links together becoming numb for PartyNextDoor to achieve no feelings. With entertainment like these songs, it is no coincidence a “no feelings” culture is among us.

Why so cold?

Having emotions has become a bad thing. How did we get to this point? Let’s start off with the way we raise boys versus girls. In our culture, we reject anything feminine to stereotype a man. We even believe that holding a male child for too long will make him emotionally soft. We also link women with weakness.

In our culture, for a boy to become a “real man,” he must be strong, cunning, and provide for his family. He must never back down. He must never cry in public and society is accepting, and almost encouraging, to violence. They are praised to be a womanizer. These stereotypical qualities have been hyped up in films and television shows of today. Countless movies show strong, manly men with super-sized muscles and womanizers as protagonist heroes in most genres. What’s even sadder is that we tell three, four, and five year olds to be men when they are still just boys.

“Don’t cry!”

“Crying is for sissies and girls!”

“Don’t you want to be a man?”

“Man up!”

“You never had sex with a girl before, what are you gay or something?”

The culture one lives in tells you to reject any emotions or sensitivity. Just leave that to the women. You can easily find those farces at any football game, even the peewee football games. We wonder why men can be so cold but, are we raising them to be cold?

After you become cold, violence becomes simple way too easy. We don’t have emotions such as empathy for human life. We are slowly becoming desensitized to violence because of video games and films. Things that would horrify and haunt your grandfather’s generation is now something that babies can handle. Corporation’s soul purpose’s are to regenerate a profit over helping others.

Somehow, we still wonder why so many people are homeless and hungry.

Women in return become objects of pleasure after being desensitized by men, and become emotionless from dealing with emotionless men. From there, a vicious cycle of pain emerges. The pain can only be returned with violence because when you talk about your feelings, people respond in ways such as: “Get out of your feelings!” or, “You’re bringing me down!”

Are we so afraid to get hurt that we have stopped feeling all together?

So what are we to do? Do we remain cold? Or do we embrace humanity? To be human means to have emotions and show them. It means to care, love and hate. But most importantly, to feel! This is a feeling the world needs to acknowledge, and no matter how we try to hide it, we do have feelings.

If females are portrayed to be weak, then embrace that weakness. In my opinion, it takes a stronger person to feel and to understand emotions. To know what’s bad gives room for growth. To feel allows you to live in the moment and savor every minute you experience. No, feelings don’t make you weak, they make you stronger!

You can understand different perspectives when you feel for others. The most powerful feeling is love and excitement and the adrenaline running through you when you feel both emotions. Nothing in the world is as satisfying as knowing who you are, what you want, and what you have to do to get it. Without these emotions, you would never be able to achieve the things you set out for.

So stop this “no feelings” epidemic in its tracks! Say, yes I am human. I have emotions. Sometimes I cry but I am not weak. I am strong and I am stronger than those of you who pretend to not care because I do care and I will continue to care.

I know who I am, and I am not ashamed!