I have to admit that I have not been feeling the best lately. It's no fun being unemployed and looking for work full time. On the other hand, I've had rich times with my family and I can feel us getting closer to one another. I feel afraid at times and completely free at others. Feelings are always present. So often we try to dull what we would call "negative" feelings and enhance what we call "positive" feelings.
Unfortunately, we pay a high price for our pursuit of comfort. We devalue our feelings and chances are if we do that with ourselves, we do it with others. I know it's been true for me. I remember reading my kids a book when they were toddlers called, "We're going on a bear hunt." The book is about a family going on a bear hunt and they meet all kinds of obstacles. They encounter fields of long grass, rivers, mountains and caves. The part of the book I love is that with each obstacle they meet, they say, "we can't go over it, we can't go under it, we'll have to go through it." Unless we want to severely stunt our growth, we have to go through our feelings and simply feel them.
What if feelings were neither positive nor negative? Anger is often thought of as negative emotion. However, it is really what we do with anger that matters. If we hurt others in our anger, it is our decision to hurt that is negative and not the anger itself. Anger can be a very positive force if it fuels us to seek justice for others, protect our families, or right a wrong. Most people would say that happiness is a positive emotion. But, what if the thing that makes me happy is shooting heroin into my bloodstream? Is happy still positive? Okay, you get it. Emotions are subjective. While emotions are present for all kinds of reasons, at the base level they are present to be felt.
What if you could feel something and know that there was no need to act on the feeling? Lately I've been paying more attention to how I'm feeling and doing my best to simply feel. If I'm feeling down, I don't try to chase the feeling away. It's not bad. It's not the enemy. But, I am more apt to communicate to someone close to me that I'm feeling down. I don't even need to try to figure out why I'm feeling the way I'm feeling.
I hope this year that I continue to give myself permission to feel how I'm feeling. I don't want to not try to dull the feelings but to reach out to others and to value the feelings of the people around me. This year I want to feel life in all of it's complexity, messiness and beauty.
Wade. A few years ago, I confronted this truth that emotions in and of themselves are not positive or negative. It is our actions, reactions to them that can be pos/neg. I think it's an important distinction. It's perfectly okay to feel angry, but what do you choose to do with that anger? The same is true with happiness, sadness, fear, etc. We can let emotions rule us either in the pursuit of them or in the denial or avoidance of them.
ReplyDeleteThis is the first of our blogs I've read and I appreciate your honesty - I've always appreciated your honesty. Keep on.
Thanks for your comment, Brian. Last year I embraced the idea that I don't have to anything with my emotions. I never felt more free. Just feel them, talk about them if you'd like, don't force anything. Thanks for the encouragement. Best to you, friend.
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