Chapter 5: I Feel Bad

The car is parked below the building, the engine off, and he does not get out.

That window upstairs is lit; the family is home. He knows that when he goes up, someone will ask, “Have you eaten?” and he will say, “I have”; someone will ask, “How was today?” and he will say, “All right.” He doesn’t want to say anything. He just sits in the car, hands still resting on the wheel, watching a few small insects flying under a streetlamp ahead.

In his heart there are only three words: I feel bad.

These words are said most often not out loud but inside. You wake in the morning, and before you have remembered what it is, your chest sinks; only then do you remember: oh, that thing isn’t over yet. Two in the morning, eyes open, heart beating fast, and you couldn’t say what you are afraid of.

There are many kinds of feeling bad. Irritation is a tangle of hemp wound round the chest; tiredness seeps out from the bones; anger pushes upward; grievance sinks downward, sinks to the throat and blocks it there; fear comes in cold waves; anxiety is the heart hanging in midair, unable to come down; sadness is empty, like a room with something missing.

When people feel bad, the ways they deal with it all differ. Some say it, some hide it, some use it to get something, some run from it with all their might. Look at these ways, and then look at that “I,” and what it is after in them.

The commonest is hiding.

Family ask: What’s wrong? You say: Nothing. A colleague asks: Why do you look so awful? You say: Didn’t sleep well, it’s nothing. You phone home, and the other end asks, “How have you been?” You say: Fine, everything’s fine. You hang up and sit there, not moving for a long time.

Why hide? Because the moment it shows, one thing shows: I can’t hold up any more. As if a person who can’t hold up will be looked down on, pitied, treated as a nuisance; as if only those who can hold up deserve to stand properly here. “I’m fine” is the “I” holding a shape in place for itself: I’m all right, I’m still the one who can carry things, don’t worry about me, and don’t think less of me either.

There is also a kind of feeling bad that is meant to be shown. Late at night you post: So tired. No reason given, just those words, with a dark picture. Then every so often you glance to see whether anyone has asked. Someone asks, and you say: It’s nothing. But something inside loosens a little. Those words are the “I” reaching a hand outward: Does anyone see me? Does anyone care whether I feel bad?

And there is a kind that uses feeling bad as a reason. Late in a quarrel: I’m already like this, what more do you want? Or: I’m in a bad mood, don’t provoke me. Feeling bad here becomes a shield, and also a stick: I feel bad, so I needn’t be reasonable; I feel bad, so you have to give way to me. The one saying it knows it isn’t quite right, but at that moment feeling bad is the only thing in his hands.

And there is a kind that is fear. The bad feeling comes, you dare not look at it, you hurry to find something else: scrolling the phone till midnight; the TV on, not watched, just left talking; drinking with someone till you can’t think of anything. As if, so long as you don’t stop, the bad feeling can’t catch up. When you really do stop, alone in a room, it closes in from every side.

And a deeper fear: Is something wrong with me? Everyone else is fine, why is it only me? I’m this fragile—am I ill? With this fear, another layer of feeling bad presses on top of the first.

So many ways—hiding, showing, using, running, fearing. Some are consideration, not wanting the family to worry too; some are real tiredness, only wanting a rest. But very often they guard the same fear: the fear that feeling bad will swallow the “I.”

When people feel bad, they often feel themselves growing smaller. The usual me who can talk and laugh and decide has been tangled in hemp, pushed by a fire, hollowed out by an emptiness; as if the ground in the heart were caving in piece by piece, and at the end of the caving, I would be gone. So we hide, hold up, run, use it to trade for a little caring; all of it to save that me who is about to be swallowed.

Below this is an assumption: feeling bad is my accident. I was supposed to be fine; now there has been a breakdown; while I feel bad I am not truly being, I am “having a problem,” and must hurry to get fixed, and once fixed I can go on living properly.

Where does feeling bad come from?

In Chinese, many of the ways of speaking about feelings carry no “I” at all: anger came, the fire rose, the heart sank, a wave of sadness surged up, the fire flared, the sense of grievance came up, fear so great the legs went weak. Anger “comes,” fire “flares,” sadness “surges,” like water rising from somewhere; no one summoned it.

These ways of speaking are more honest than “I got angry.”

Try it: right now, order yourself to be angry. Not by thinking of something infuriating, just a direct command: now, be angry. It won’t come. Try again: next time the fire rises, order it to stop at once. It won’t stop either; at most you can hold it down, and held down, it is still pushing underneath.

Which feeling comes when, how big, how long it stays: a person has almost no say. They come as weather comes; they go as weather goes. In the sentence “I got angry,” the “I” is added afterward: the fire rose first, and then an “I” followed and claimed it.

It is like rain. When we say “it’s raining,” no one asks who is doing the raining; the rain is just the rain falling. Anger can be said this way too: anger came. Something rises in this place, pushes upward, pushes to the throat, pushes into a sharp word, and after a while slowly settles down again. It is just this one time of its own rising and settling.

That fear, “feeling bad will swallow me,” has it backwards. It is not that there is first a whole, sound me who is then swallowed by feeling bad; it is that feeling bad is happening in this place, and this place calls itself “I.” When feeling bad rises, the “I” is not swallowed; the “I” is just this place, now, feeling bad. Feeling bad is, this place is, not a bit less.

Since feeling bad is not something held in my hand, can I step back from it, watch it, and not be swept in?

Many have taught this method: treat feelings as cars coming and going on a road, and you are the one standing at the roadside; the cars come and go, the one standing does not move. The method helps; stepping back, things are often less stifling.

But where does that “one who watches” come from? It too has only just come about: after feeling bad for too long, a pull to step back arises inside, steps back to make a little space, and stands in that space to watch. This stepping back is also something happening; the one who watches is also inside this time of feeling bad, being together with it. It has not gone to stand outside feeling bad.

If you take this watcher for an I higher than feeling bad, truer, forever unstained, then that picture goes up on the wall again: behind, an unmoving master; in front, troubles coming and going. The picture makes people think that if they hide behind, all will be well. But there are always times a person can’t get behind: the feeling is so great there isn’t even the strength to step back. Then the panic is worse: I can’t even keep watching—am I completely finished?

There is no need to hide behind. Behind, there is no room the rain doesn’t leak into. Feeling bad is here, and being is right here; being is not outside feeling bad; being is just how this time of feeling bad is happening.

This sounds a little cold: if feeling bad is being, then is the suffering for nothing?

No. Feeling bad is real, and not a bit of it needs to be made light of. When it hurts, it really hurts. The year you lost someone, waking every morning meant losing them all over again; that is real. Wrongly accused, the grievance blocks you from the chest all the way to the throat; that is real. To say “feeling bad is being too” is not to tell people not to feel bad; it is not “look on the bright side, this is being too, accept it.” Stopping a suffering person’s mouth with a principle is not being; it is disrespect.

There is only one thing to say: when you feel bad, you are no less being.

When people feel bad, besides the feeling itself, they often carry a heavier layer: I shouldn’t be like this. How am I anxious again, how am I so fragile, everyone else is fine, only I can’t cope. I have to get better first before I can live properly; these days don’t count, and when I’m better I’ll start living again from the beginning.

This layer is added afterward.

The day you feel bad is a whole day. It is not a broken, uncounted blank in the middle of good days, to be made up later; it is simply a day, fully being: the heart heavy, a few mouthfuls eaten all the same, the light outside moving from morning to evening all the same, lying down at night all the same. It does not wait for the feeling to pass before its turn to count comes.

When you feel bad, being is not a bit less, nor a bit more. On ordinary days people often live half asleep, eating without knowing what they ate, walking without knowing where they walked; those days are just as full, only people don’t touch them. When you feel bad, you do touch it: every moment presses solidly on you, minute by minute goes by, the heartbeat audible, the breaths countable. A day like this can in no way be called a blank.

That layer, “I shouldn’t be like this,” sometimes loosens by itself. When it loosens, the feeling won’t leave right away; only then a wave of feeling bad is just a wave of feeling bad, with no charge pressed on top of it. If it doesn’t loosen, the days it presses are just as much being. Not holding up won’t make a person fall out of being; showing it, nothing will be taken back.

The sky feels bad sometimes too.

A summer afternoon, so close you can hardly breathe, clouds pressing down layer on layer, very low, the leaves not moving at all. Then the wind rises, first a coolness, lifting the dust off the ground, then a flash, a clap of thunder, and the rain comes smashing down, rattling the windowpanes. Half an hour of it, then it stops. The clouds part, the sun comes out, puddle after puddle on the ground, the air smelling of wet earth, the leaves washed shining.

No one was in charge of that downpour. No cloud was urging itself, “Don’t rain, keep calm,” and no patch of sky was saying, “I lost control again.” The closeness was closeness itself; the wind, the wind itself; the rain falling, the rain itself. It came, so it came; when it went, it went.

A dog is grazed by a car, a patch of skin torn on its leg. It limps to a corner of the wall, lies down, and licks the wound over and over, licking a while, resting a while, eyes half shut. It hurts, really hurts; now and then it whimpers. But it does not, while hurting, scold itself for being so careless; nor, while hurting, worry whether it is ruined from now on. It hurts, licks, falls asleep. After a few days the wound scabs over; a few days more, the scab falls off, and it is running in the yard again.

A tree has a branch snapped off by a gale. The break is raw white, oozing sticky sap. No one bandages it; slowly it grows a ring of hard scar round the break and seals it. The next spring, beside the break, two new branches come out.

These bad times all come of themselves and go of themselves. When they come they are real: the pain really pain, the closeness really closeness, the break really a break; but on these things no further layer of “I shouldn’t be like this” is pressed on top, nor is there anyone standing alongside trying to keep the feeling in check. They don’t go to war with their own bad feeling.

Where does the war a person wages with feeling bad come from? From that “I” which thinks it should always be fine, should always be in charge of everything. It takes feeling bad for an enemy, a thief broken into the house, and so it blocks, drives out, holds down, hides, reasons with it, treats it with methods. The fiercer the war, the more is piled on top of the feeling.

When people feel bad, what they want most is to get out of it. The feeling is real, and wanting out is real too; feeling bad changes, and the push to change it changes along with it as it meets it: the illness gets better, the matter passes, someone comes, and it really does get lighter. What is extra is another thought: this me who feels bad doesn’t count; I must wait for the feeling to pass, and then the real me will come back. Once this thought arises, it is as if there were a person, fine to begin with, locked inside feeling bad, waiting to get out. Look at this person. He is not the feeling itself; he is the one who “has” the feeling: the feeling presses on him, and he wants to put it down. But where is this person? Look for him while you feel bad, and what you find is that heaviness in the chest, that blockage in the throat, that sentence going round and round in your head; look further back, and you find a thought: “I want these to stop, quickly.” This thought is anxious too, flustered too, hurting too; it is itself part of this time of feeling bad. Look as you will, you won’t find someone standing beside the feeling who doesn’t feel bad at all. Telling yourself to look on the bright side, distracting yourself, learning to accept it, to allow it: these often truly make people feel a bit better, and are nothing to laugh at. What falls short lies elsewhere: if they are used for another purpose—once the feeling has been dealt with, that me will finally count, finally return to normal—then something always falls short. Then looking on the bright side becomes someone persuading the feeling; distraction becomes someone hiding somewhere else; acceptance becomes someone standing aside nodding agreement. The method is still the method, but underneath it has first assumed there is someone alongside, and so there are still two: one feeling bad, one dealing with it. As long as there are two, one pushes and the other pushes back; the harder the push, the fiercer the pushing back.

How does that “one alongside” come about? Long ago, the heart picked out a few things and took them as me: the energetic me, the capable me, the good-tempered me, the me people like. When these come, a person says, “This is really me,” comfortable, feeling nothing to deal with at all. When other shapes come, he won’t own them: the one who lost his temper, “I wasn’t myself just now”; the one who was down for a month, “I’ve been off lately”; the one who made a fool of himself in front of people, “that’s nothing like me”; the one too ill to get out of bed, “when I’m better I’ll really live.” The moment he won’t own them, there is a split: on this side stands a picked-out me, on that side lies a disowned me, and when the two meet, there is irritation, urgency, grievance, “why me.” The feeling itself is real: losing someone brings grief, being wronged brings grievance, illness brings pain; these come of themselves, no disowning needed. But very often a second layer is pressed on top of the feeling: as soon as it comes, a person first pushes it away and says, this doesn’t count as me; at the moment of pushing it away, an extra person appears, standing alongside, bullied by it. People often can’t tell which presses heaviest: the feeling itself, or this second layer.

But it can’t be pushed away. In that flash of temper, the fire is you: the heat in the face, the hand that slammed the table, the rush as the words came out, are you; and the flash of regret crossing the heart at the same moment is you too. There is no good-tempered you hiding behind, only temporarily dispossessed by the fire. In that month of being down, being down is you; those thirty mornings, each one was you wholly being, not standing in for a “normal me.” The one in the sickbed is you too, not a broken version of you to be swapped back once repaired. In that moment of making a fool of yourself, the one red to the ears is you. The few things you picked out are you, and the ones you disown are equally you; you are this one moment, that one the next, and it never asks whether you own it; there is no moment that must first borrow a name from another moment to finally count as you.

Being doesn’t pick; what picks is only the “I” that arrives afterward. So even a little short won’t do: as long as one “this doesn’t count as me” remains, a crack remains, and on this side of the crack stands a picky person, and the war has a side again. What you like is you, what you dislike is you too; the comfortable moment is being, and the uncomfortable moment is being too, not a bit less.

Follow it one step further in. Feeling bad comes: that is one time. Not wanting this feeling: another time. Finding a way to make it pass: another time. Afterward, being annoyed with yourself for not owning it just now: another time. Layer on layer, as if above every layer there should be someone who finally steps out and says: all this is mine, I own it. But if that last one really stepped out, would his “I own it” not need someone further behind to own it in turn? Chase it this way and there is no end; for every owner chased out, there is one more layer to be owned. That the chase has no end is not because it didn’t go far enough; it is that the person was never needed: feeling bad is just this time of feeling bad; not wanting it is just this time of not wanting it; annoyance is just this time of annoyance; each time it comes out, it already belongs to this place, owing no one behind a signature. What people think hardest to let in is that moment of not owning, as if in not owning, a person had run outside himself. Even that moment of not owning is you.

The reverse is the same. Some take their best years for the real me: full of energy then, everything going well, everyone speaking well of them; the days after all count as “having lost myself.” Pushing away the bad and clutching the good are the same crack: one puts the real me off into later, the other leaves it in the past, and this one now counts at neither end.

Nor does this mean a person stops fighting for anything. Feeling bad and going to a doctor, being bullied and demanding redress, being unable to work something out and going to talk to someone: all this is this place moving wholly. What is gone is only the second person standing alongside, at war with his own feeling. Two pulls in the heart at once, one wanting to cry it out, one wanting to hold up, is not a split into two people either; both pulls belong to this place, both are you.

To say this is not to take away feeling bad, nor to take away the war. Feeling bad will come; it will come again; the days the war is fought are also a stir in this place. Only, in this war, the enemy and the gatekeeper both stepped up afterward; underneath the war there is neither an enemy nor a gatekeeper. In this place, feeling bad is happening, as that downpour happened that afternoon, as that wound hurt on that dog’s leg. It is a spell of weather in this place, not a failure of being.

Feeling bad is not all of one kind either.

Some come fast and go fast: someone cuts in front of you in a queue, the fire flares, and ten steps on you’ve forgotten. Some come and don’t leave: a thing pressed into the heart for many years, left untouched as a rule, and when touched it hurts, like a bone that never set right. Some have no reason you can name: an afternoon, nothing happening, just empty, just listless, and you can’t say why. Some come in bouts: several days fine, you think it’s over, and one morning it is back, as heavy as on the first day. And some turn into something else: a great sadness, after many years, becomes a very faint missing; a great fear, after many years, becomes a kind of carefulness.

The ones that come fast are being; the ones that won’t leave are being; the ones without a nameable reason are being; the ones that keep returning are being; the ones that have turned into something else are being too. Each has its own way of coming and its own place of going; the changing and the unchanging are all being as it happens. There is no kind that “shouldn’t be.”

Some bad feelings are a letter. With a certain person you always feel tight in the chest, and must run every sentence through your head three times before speaking; this tightness may be saying: things don’t meet smoothly here. A job, and every morning the thought of it makes you want to throw up; this nausea may be saying: this road is too twisted. Don’t rush to destroy it as a bad thing; first listen to what it is saying. It is something this place is touching right now, a stir that the touching makes.

Some bad feelings call for finding someone. Feeling so bad you can’t sleep, can’t eat, don’t want to do anything, sinking lower day by day: then go to a doctor, find someone you can talk to. This is nothing to be ashamed of. When the body is ill you see a doctor; when the heart is ill it is the same. Going to find someone is this place reaching a hand outward; in that reaching, being.

There is one more thing, the easiest to miss in feeling bad.

When people feel bad, they often think they are the only one. Everyone else is laughing, getting on with their days; only I have fallen in here alone. That is why they hide, hold up, post those words and see whether anyone asks.

But feeling bad has never been shut up in one body. A small child falls over; if no grown-up sees, he gets up by himself, pats off the dirt and goes on; but the moment he sees his mother running over, he suddenly bursts into tears. The pain is the same pain, yet it is tangled up with who is there and who is not. Someone wronged outside holds it in all the way home, holds it to the front door; the door opens, someone at home asks, “Have you eaten?” and the tears come at once.

That child, that person in tears at the door, at that moment shows the very thing that was hidden all along: I can’t hold up, I need someone. In that moment of showing, nothing is taken back, no one is looked down on; instead a pair of hands reaches over, a cup of water is handed over, someone sits down beside.

Feeling bad has its edge: it is felt only in this place, and no one can take it away; but at its edge, other people are often standing. Some say nothing, only sit there; some listen at the other end of the phone, keep listening, listen until the crying here is done. They cannot get inside this place’s feeling bad, but they are right up against its edge.

The man who parked below and didn’t want to go up sat a long time, thinking of nothing, just sitting. Then his phone lit up: a message from home: Where are you?

He looked at it a while and replied with one word: Downstairs.

Then he got out of the car and went up. Feeling bad was still there, and went upstairs with him. The door opened; the light in the room was on.