There are two categories of emotions: the kinds we want and the kinds we don’t. We treat them like pets. If they behave exactly like we want and are cute and cuddly we reward and pamper them. If they don’t behave we chastise them and work to correct them or we decide we want nothing to do with them and try to give them away or force them outside to fend for themselves. If they simply aren’t domesticated at all we treat them like rabid dogs or lions coming for our heads with jaws wide. We run at the first sight of them desperately hiding and hoping that they don’t catch us.
Neither is particularly a healthy attitude towards a significant part of embodied life. In fact at best it makes us somewhat deaf and blind to our own soul and to the life going on around us. Emotions are not the enemy they are the song our soul sings in response to life. That song may be about fury and pain or grief or a sadness so deep it’s like an ocean of tears. It could be the hum of pleasure at a day full of sunlight or relief at a bad time passing or the determination to achieve a goal over long odds. Each song is beautiful and deserves to be heard through the voice of the person feeling it. That is separate from the choices that we make concerning those feels or what actions we take once we have them. The emotions are not at fault for bad choices or difficult outcomes. That’s on us. We didn’t do this that or the other because of how we were feeling, we chose to do them once the feeling came instead of doing something else.
Emotions aren’t meant to be transformed, they are meant to be felt. Like an ocean wave they will come in and then they will go and in their wake they will leave treasures to be explored, new discoveries of self brought to light. That doesn’t mean that they come or go easily; there are sneaker waves and rip tides that can take us to a depth we don’t know how to handle or don’t know how to return from. But we are much better equipped to handle them if we have experience over time of what they are and what happens when we’re in them. Avoiding them, trying to only experience certain kinds, turning your back on them means you are a prime candidate for being swept out to sea and not making it back at all.
So when you are feeling emotional, don’t apologize, don’t try to change what you’re feeling, don’t judge, just feel. In that moment you validate your essential self from which wisdom grows.
