system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Can anyone help me argue against this tendency of mine?

Often when I'm feeling good I'll talk myself out of it by saying that it's irrational.  

Can you arm me with some arguments against this?  

Especially against the idea that if we don't use rational thought for every part of our lives, or are able to rationally justify everything we feel, we are somehow cheating and living like hypocrites.  I feel like I'm tending towards ignorance and stupidity when I allow myself to feel things that aren't rationally grounded, like I'm somehow living in the dark and refusing to see the world as it really is, or approach it like I "should".

(I know one argument is that we obviously don't use rational thought for everything and can still feel happy when we don't, but that doesn't help usually!)

**tl;dr I need help justifying feeling things that aren't rationally grounded without looking at myself like someone living in the dark.**

THANKS!
gpt
You have a bad theory of rationality. Rationality is not about justification, but about openness to criticism. The idea that one must justify every thought, feeling, and action inevitably leads to infinite regress, hypocrisy, intellectual paralysis, and, in the end, either dogmatism or relativism.

Feelings are like tacit interpretations of a situation and, at once, also motivations to preserve or change it. They may be appropriate or not. Sometimes we may have reason to suspect our feelings about a situation are inappropriate and try to act contrary to them. We don't have to accept our feelings uncritically, but neither is it incumbent upon us to justify them.

Rationality, by itself, doesn't tell us what feelings are appropriate. It all depends on what you're doing or what problem you're trying to solve. A feeling of fear may be an appropriate response in one problem-context but then not in another--sometimes it can marshal your mind and body to act appropriately and other times it can be futile and debilitating. The problem must come first, because otherwise there is nothing to be rational about.