We don’t have to like someone or love someone just because we think that we should, just because some part of us thinks that we should.

If we do not like or love someone whom we feel we should, we may feel bad, guilty, or even some disbelief—because there may be a part of us that thinks we should feel something differently from how we feel.

But then, we can ask ourselves, what is it that makes us believe that we should feel differently from how we feel? What internal beliefs do we have in place that are making us feel ashamed? What is the root cause? And why should we feel bad when what we feel wasn’t even a conscious decision?

What expectations are we contradicting? What rules are we breaking? And, who created them?

It’s worth exploring the foundation upon which even our most taken for granted beliefs are built, because they may come from a place that is disconnected from the actuality of who we really are.

So much of the way we live our lives is based on societal expectations and unwritten rules of what it means to be a person living in our world. But do these humanly derived ideas automatically make them fact?

Is it possible that what we’ve been taught to revere doesn’t hold true for us? And if not, can we accept this realization?

Can we move into the truth of how we feel without judgement or condemnation?

Relationships are complex, and our feelings and emotions can be varied and multilayered. We can feel many things at once. Life isn’t always straightforward or simple.

We can feel a softness toward a person and immense compassion for the life experiences that likely shaped who they have become, while at the same time understanding that we are distanced by their coldness and criticism, for example—feeling the existence of a rift we cannot quite transcend. We can feel loving feelings, while understanding that it’s not love.

So often, we emphasize and espouse the good parts of our lives and our relationships with the people who encompass them, while shielding tightly the dark and less appealing parts. We don’t want to admit to discord or acknowledge the aspects we feel contrast the notions of what we have been taught to idealize.

But, we don’t have to look at everything as good or bad, right or wrong, love or hatred.

Nothing is ever so simple or obvious.

We attach so much judgement to the thoughts we think and the emotions we feel, but it’s not necessary to live this way. We don’t have to wish for things to be different from what they are. We can simply allow them to be.

I think that to genuinely feel free, we have to allow ourselves to feel our truth, regardless of what shows up. We have to be able to admit to how we feel, especially that which makes us feel ashamed or uncomfortable, because there is a powerful truth resonating within that space.

And we can find a way to feel it without judging ourselves for it. We just have to be willing to release the beliefs and ideas that no longer serve us.

Sometimes life just is, and things just happen, and we simply feel how we feel.

We don’t have to have reasons or justifications.

We can just allow our feelings to be.

We can allow it all to simply, softly just be.

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