I Felt It...

...did you...

I felt it.

Or at least I think I did, the way a wind chime thinks it’s composing symphonies when really it’s just being pushed around.

Did you feel it.

Should we all feel it.

Should we RSVP to this mysterious sensation as if it’s a potluck and we’re bringing the emotional equivalent of a half‑empty bag of chips.

But what is it that we felt. Did we feel happy. Did we feel sad. Did we feel that strange in‑between hum, like a refrigerator running in the background of our lives, steady and unremarkable until someone points it out and suddenly it’s all we hear.

Recent studies, particularly by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, suggest there are twenty-seven distinct categories of emotions. Twenty‑seven. That’s nearly a whole month of feelings if you ration them out one per day, though I suspect most of us binge them like a show we didn’t mean to get invested in.

Have I ever felt twenty-seven distinct emotions in my lifetime.

Have you.

Probably, though I’m grateful I don’t remember them all. Imagine carrying around a catalog of every micro‑feeling you’ve ever had: Page 142, “mild irritation at a squeaky shoe.” Page 389, “existential dread while waiting for the microwave.” Page 506, “unexpected tenderness toward a wilted houseplant.”

Exhausting.

And anyway, most of the time I just feel nothing. Not the dramatic, cinematic nothingness of a lone figure staring into the void, but the practical kind, like bubble wrap after all the bubbles have been popped: flat, quiet…safe.

That seems safest.

Because feeling nothing is easier than sorting through twenty-seven emotional flavors, some of which probably taste like regret or wet cardboard. Feeling nothing means never having to ask, “Is this joy or indigestion.” Feeling nothing means never having to admit that sometimes happiness and sadness show up wearing each other’s coats and you can’t tell who’s who.

But here’s the nonsensical truth I keep circling: Maybe the point isn’t to feel all twenty-seven emotions. Maybe the point is to notice the tiny ones that slip between categories: the soft wobble of almost‑hope, the warm static of being slightly understood, the peculiar buoyancy of realizing the world hasn’t ended yet, even though it felt like it might.

Maybe the safest thing isn’t feeling nothing. Maybe the safest thing is admitting that feeling anything at all is a kind of small, stubborn miracle.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it really is just the refrigerator humming again...

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