The courage to keep your feelings to yourself

There's an important book called "The Top Five Regrets of the Dying" where people in palliative care were asked what they most regretted looking back at their life. In order of most common, these were:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

I'd like to focus on #3 a little bit. The assumption there is that it takes courage to express your feelings. I'd like to argue that it in some cases it's a cowardly and selfish thing to do.

It may take courage to overcome a fear of judgement and the vulnerability of expressing your feelings, sure, but simply wearing your heart on your sleeve can be inconsiderate of others. When you're a child, you have no choice, and your parents need to learn the patience to manage your emotional outbursts until you're able to manage them on your own.

To continue to have these into adulthood is not courageous, it's a lack of self-control. The selflessness to not let your feelings drain those around you takes strength. Just as the parent doesn't burden the child with their worries about how they're going to pay that month's bills. Imagine that!

I think the book mostly concerns itself with the vulnerability kind of fear but the wording bothered me (along with the sampling bias of course).

Sometimes your feelings are your own burden to carry. May you have the courage to carry them!