You may consider that lily-like sensitivity and subsequent hurt feelings are virtues, yet it is not smart to call excessive emotional involvement in hurt feelings high on the scale of virtues. First of all, there is more going on in the world that needs your attention than your hurt feelings. Do you imagine you bless the world with your tears? It’s good you have such a vent, yet it is not good that you overwork that vent and make it a frequent gusher.
Sensitivity has its place, yes. However, if your sensitive feelings, even for the sake of others, lay you low, then certainly it is not a virtue but rather a weakness. You may well be flying under false colors to call excessive sensitivity a strength.
Look at it this way, beloveds: If you were physically excessively frail, overly delicate, pale, would you consider such frailty a virtue? It may bring attention to you, yet it may be attention that keeps you wiping your tears and doting on your frailty.
Nor am I suggesting that you be cold-hearted. Heavens, no. Cold-hearted insensitivity and hard-heartedness are far from the way to go.
Of course, you are understandably thinking, how do you possibly lower your sensitivity ratio? How do you stop this track you are on?
One way might be to draw yourself up sharp and understand that frequent hurt feelings can be like soaking in a hot bath too long or too often and may well be self-indulgent. A bath has its place, yet your soaking in it again and again is not likely its place.
Overwrought sensitivity may lead to bitterness. I know you don’t want to become a bitter person. Hurt feelings may well be tantamount to your gaining a vision of the world as cruel and uncaring. You started out as a caring person who now may feel too sensitive for this world, and your very sensitivity may lead to resentment toward this perceived uncaring world that does not honor and respect and treat you and your sensitivity well. It is not a giant leap from repeatedly hurt feelings to bitterness.
In any case, feeling wounded a lot isn’t a contest you want to win.
What is the name given to a state you can reach where you do not take your hurt feelings so seriously? When someone else has an oversight or intention and vents his insensitivity, and it lands on you, and you shrug your shoulders and don’t take it to heart -- what is the word for this? What is the name of this quality when you don’t take something personally even when it was expressly personal for you? What is the name of this big-visioned quality? What is the name of this strength? What is the name of this strength that allows you to shrug your shoulders and not take something to heart, not to feel bad nor have any thought of resentment?
I believe it is called love. Love is strong. Loving yourself enough will allow you to not take your sensitivity to heart. For a moment, you will observe the poor manners or whatever it is, and you don’t let yourself get sidetracked. You decline to take it on. Redressing others’ errors simply isn’t a bus you take any longer. You go on your way, not oblivious, but simply not taking on someone else’s difficulty and making it yours.
This is one secret to youth, beloveds. This secret is equivalent to eating more than an apple a day and beats all the beauty treatments you can imagine. You are the designator of your day and the roads you take and not anyone else. You are the driver of your life.