A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat
You woke up and started the day.
What do you truly feel?
Busy schedules, traffic jams, overpriced tags on the shelves…
Life moves fast, almost mechanically.
But somewhere in between all this — what is it that you actually feel?
Have you ever paused, even for a minute, to notice what is passing through your mind, your heart, your body?
Not only to explain or justify it, but simply to notice it.
What is “to feel” anyway?
Dictionaries define it simply as experiencing something physical or emotional. A simple definition for something that rarely feels simple.
We know many names for what we feel: happy, sad, overwhelmed, devastated, embarrassed, angry.
But there are moments when none of these quite fit — moments when language feels insufficient, and we find ourselves explaining a single feeling with entire paragraphs.
Maybe the problem is not that we don’t feel enough.
Maybe we just don’t always have the words.
And when we don’t have the words, we sometimes begin to treat the feeling itself as if it doesn’t quite belong — as if it is too vague, too much, or simply unnecessary.
But perhaps it is not the feeling that is unfamiliar, only the language surrounding it.
I have never been someone who is consumed by emotions, nor someone who ignores them.
I tend to sit with them, to make sense of them — sometimes at length.
I could write pages about a single feeling.
And yet, sometimes, what I look for is just one word.
One term that reminds me I am not the only one who has felt this.
This is where languages quietly step in.
What has always fascinated me about them is this:
Some seem to have paused longer on certain emotions — long enough to give them a name.
There are moments when time suddenly feels limited — when you start measuring your life against invisible deadlines, and a quiet anxiety settles in.
Not loud, not dramatic, but persistent.
In German, there is a word for this: Torschlusspanik.
Or those rare moments when you are completely immersed in the present — when nothing else seems to exist beyond what you are living right now.
A kind of joy that is calm rather than loud.
In Welsh, they call this Hwyl.
Or the restless anticipation of waiting for someone — checking the door, looking outside, feeling time stretch in an almost physical way.
In Inuit, this becomes Iktsuarpok.
And then there is that quiet, almost bittersweet awareness that something is beautiful precisely because it will pass.
Not despite its impermanence, but because of it.
The Japanese have a word for this: Mono no aware.
Even the darker corners of being human have found their place in language.
That subtle, uncomfortable moment when someone else’s misfortune brings a sense of satisfaction you didn’t ask for.
In German: Schadenfreude.
If you notice closely, these words do more than describe emotions.
They carry their weight, their rhythm, their texture.
Some feel light, others heavy. Some linger longer than others.
And perhaps this is where something deeper reveals itself:
Being human may be a shared condition, but the way we are allowed to experience it is not always the same.
Some cultures make space for certain emotions, while others leave them unnamed — and therefore, often unnoticed.
And when a feeling has no name in the language we live in,
it becomes easier to overlook it.
Not because it is insignificant, but because it has nowhere to stay.
Yet these experiences are not foreign to us.
Perhaps learning new words for emotions is not just about language.
Perhaps it is a way of recognizing parts of ourselves we couldn’t quite name before — not because they were absent, but because they were never fully acknowledged.
Because to feel is not always loud.
It is not only a racing heartbeat or a visible reaction.
Sometimes it sits quietly — in your chest, in your stomach, behind your eyes — waiting to be noticed.
And when a feeling feels too complex, too layered to be named,
it might help to remember this:
Somewhere else, in another language, shaped by another way of seeing the world, someone has already felt it deeply enough to name it.
You are not alone in your feelings — even when your own language does not seem to have a place for them.
And maybe learning these words is not only about understanding others, but about finally making space for ourselves.
If you are curious to explore more of these emotions and the words that hold them, you might enjoy The Book of Human Emotions by Tiffany Watt Smith.
Between Everywhere and Nowhere 
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