Will

by Will Smith

I started noticing feelings everywhere. I’d be sitting in a business meeting, and someone would say, “It’s nothing personal … it’s just business.” And I realized, Oh, shit, there’s no such thing as “just business”—everything is personal. People get furious, excited, frustrated, hopeful, hopeless, disappointed, fearful, embarrassed, all in the confines of “business” meetings. Everybody is caught up in their feelings, making all their decisions all the time based only on how they feel. Even my aversion to extreme feelings … is based on how I feel about feelings. I felt like Christopher Columbus who had discovered this “new” place where people was already at (sorry about that preposition, Mom-Mom). All of politics, all of religion, all of sports, culture, marketing, eating, shopping, sex—everything is centered on how people feel. Then the truth hit me like a 90 mph fastball: Nobody gives a shit about anything except how they feel. Feeling good is the most important thing to everyone, everywhere, at all times. We are choosing our words, actions, and behaviors in order to achieve a feeling that we deem positive. There’s nothing more important than feeling how we want to feel. And people determine whether or not you love them by how well they feel you honor their feelings. This has been a precarious conundrum in most of my adult relationships. I have always been less concerned about someone’s immediate feelings than I have been about their overall well-being. People in my life h...