Infatuation

A feeling can emerge just as fast as it can leave.

Stored in my mind are all the times I let a surge of emotions carry me to a place I didn’t expect to be. The brief rush of emotion felt in some of my best memories has taught me a lot about myself.

Although infatuation is often seen as a negative concept, I believe it allows you to learn so much about yourself.

Infatuation teaches you what makes your eyes widen, brings out your passion, and inflates your emotions.

When you are young, you become infatuated easily. You fall in love with a moment and do all you can to extend that moment as long as you can. It is not until you realize you can’t make it last forever that you start to reach the end of a high.

This perceived loss will destroy you when you are young, but cause you to learn so much about yourself as you grow older.

I always used to stand behind a line from my favorite book The Catcher in the Rye:

“Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

As an immature kid, this hit home. I was mad at the world for taking away that feeling of pure ecstasy that I felt in certain moments. So you tell yourself that if you keep your emotions inside, nothing can hurt you anymore.

YOU THINK THAT BY REFRAINING FROM FEELING ANYTHING, YOU ARE INSUSCEPTIBLE TO FEELING LOSS.

As you get older, you begin to realize that by doing this, you are still losing. You are losing all of the possible memories and experiences you could make by allowing yourself to feel.

Now comes the question: Is infatuation a negative thing?

ONLY IF YOU DON’T RECOGNIZE IT.

If you recognize your infatuation, you are able to quickly decide whether it is really worth going through with. Becoming addicted to a feeling that is unsustainable is one thing. But pursuing that feeling for what it is, is completely different. Conscious pursuit of elation means that you know what you are doing and you are okay with it.

It reminds me of the movie Shutter Island.

The protagonist, Edward Daniels (portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio), is unable to recognize his infatuation with a traumatic moment from his past. His wife becomes mentally ill and ends up murdering all 3 of their children. Rather than being able to realize she is sick, Daniels continues to wish for the moments that they had before. His infatuation allows him to be convinced that she is fine and ends up not finding help for her. Once he comes to his senses, he realizes that his wife killed the kids literally, but he indirectly killed them by not allowing himself to break free of his infatuation with the past moments they had before she was sick.

It is scary what infatuation can do when it is not recognized.

Life is a balance of pursuing happiness and recognizing what isn’t happiness but rather just lust, greed, envy, or infatuation.

I repeatedly deep dive into my past experiences to analyze the decisions I’ve made in my life and what causes me to make them.

Examining your past mistakes allows you to get what you truly want for your future.

Don’t be afraid to admit you were wrong.

Learn from mistakes and get better because of them.