Tuesday, November 24, 2009

How to Combat Over-Emotionalism

You have to be willing to experience, including experience with your emotions. Experience as a whole person. If something hurts, or stings, or aches, you can cry. You can acknowledge it to yourself. Know that this feeling isn't the end, however.

In the end, you are okay. Perhaps, also, in the middle you are okay. A feeling is important, an emotion can be recognized, but in the very fact that you embraced it for what it was, you can find how to place it in its proper order. Emotions are below reason, just as lay people are below religious. It's completely fine, and indeed essential, to have both. It's fine not to feel happy but you have to know that you are. You have to be okay.

Okay sounds like an insipid concept, not as rich or full as happy. But who can go around pummeling into his own mind the fact that he is happy? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, we don't experience our happiness that way. We just live it. And when we stop to feel, we often feel bad. When we feel good, it's a boon and a grace (and a source of gratitude); nevertheless, it's normal to see your emotions as a big bundle of negativity that occasionally washes over your otherwise placid soul. Maybe it is the case, maybe not. What is certainly true is that these bad feelings you occasionally have are not it. The "it" is what you will discover in what you do and not in stopping to feel. Feel, sure, but be okay.

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