“Facts don’t care about your feelings”
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Facts
- Verifiable: Facts can be checked, supported by evidence, and proven true or false. Think of scientific data, historical events, or mathematical calculations.
- Objective: Facts are independent of personal opinions or beliefs. They describe what is, rather than how someone interprets it.
- External: Facts exist in the world outside of our own minds. They are based on things we can observe or measure.
Feelings
- Subjective: Feelings are our personal, internal responses to situations. They are greatly influenced by individual experiences, biases, and perspectives.
- Interpretive: Our feelings color how we experience and make sense of the world around us. Two people can react with very different emotions to the same situation.
- Internal: Feelings originate within ourselves, as our emotional responses to stimuli.
Key Differences
- Basis: Facts are grounded in evidence; feelings are grounded in personal experiences.
- Influence: Facts should ideally shape our opinions; feelings often play a large role in how we see the world.
- Changeability: Facts are, by nature, fixed (though new facts can alter our understanding). Feelings are fluid and can shift over time.
Why it’s Important to Distinguish
While feelings are always valid, it’s essential to maintain a distinction between what is fact and what is our reaction to it. This lets us:
- Make informed decisions: Relying solely on feelings can lead to impulsive or clouded judgment. Using facts provides a grounding for better choices.
- Have empathy without absorbing negativity: We can understand someone else’s feeling without taking their emotions as our own.
- **Separate what is from what we wish were so: This gives us greater objectivity to see the world more clearly.
Example
- Fact: Your heart rate increases during exercise. This is biological.
- Feeling: You might find exercise exhilarating or intimidating based on your past experiences and fitness level.