Do you ever feel like you’ve experienced the full spectrum of your feelings by the time you’re in your thirties?

You may not know how you’re going to feel in every scenario, but when a feeling arises, you’ve probably felt it before. After all, once you’re in your thirties, you start recognizing different versions of the same scenarios repeating again and again…so you start to get familiar with the feelings that come up again and again…like a familiar mix and match.

I never consciously felt like I’d experienced the full gamut of my feelings, but unconsciously, I thought that there were no new feelings under the sun for me.

Then today a wonderful and very exciting thing happened and I sort of couldn’t believe it. Afterwards, I almost went into shock. I felt all tingly and almost exhausted, but also sort of glowing and dreamy and unreal. It was a new feeling, which I dubbed ‘happy shock.’ I didn’t remember feeling it before. I knew ‘bad, unhappy shock’ or just plain ‘shock’ but ‘happy shock’ was a new one. And it was really exciting.

Later, I saw a play that a friend of mine wrote. It was extremely sad, and I couldn’t stop crying throughout most of it. Usually, even when plays are sad, it’s very rare that I cry and feel so connected to and affected by what’s happening. The play was extremely well-written, so that was definitely a part of it, but I think the new ‘happy shock’ feeling earlier just opened me up to my emotions in general. Perhaps one new feeling can start a bunch more.

Do you ever experience feelings you’ve never had before? Are there multiple ones yet to discover?