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Category: Embracing Emotion

Don’t Bury Your Head In The Sand

Published on August 3, 2024

One common rebuttal to joy, optimism, and positivity is, “but there’s so much suffering, injustice, and hate—how could you?”

But, this same logic can be used to argue the inverse: “But there’s so much light, beauty, and love—how could you feel sad, anxious, and hateful?”

What’s important is simply not to live in only one world or the other; to not bury your head in the sand towards any of the sides.

What’s important is to help alleviate the suffering, act against injustice, and deploy the opposite of hate… while also soaking in the plentiful light, admiring all the world’s beauty, and allowing yourself to feel and express love.

What’s important is to remain present, open-hearted, and brave. To not become so overly immersed in only one aspect of the world that you can no longer see the opposite. Because the one aspect helps deepen the appreciation and understanding of the other just as the other helps build the same for the one.

Lean into it all. Don’t bury your head in the sand. Life is found throughout.

Inner Work Based On Weather

Published on June 15, 2024

Landscaping today, I got to thinking about how certain tasks are easier after it has been dry for a few days (e.g. mowing the lawn) and how others are easier after it has been wet (e.g. digging).

It would be counterproductive to try and mow on wet days and dig on dry ones.

It would be much better to align the tasks you’re trying to do with the weather you’re in.

…As it is with inner work.

When things are happy… when you’re immersed in an adventure… when you’re enjoying quality time with friends or family… maybe that isn’t the best time to dig. Maybe that’s the time to let the branches of your happiness stretch as high as your presence will allow.

When things are sad… when you’re heavy in your feels… when you’re grieving the loss of a loved one… maybe that isn’t the best time to try and stretch your happiness (by suppressing those heavier emotions)… maybe that’s the time to let the roots of your sadness dig as deep into your feels as your presence will allow.

Digging when you’re happy and stretching your branches when you’re sad are possible… just like mowing the lawn when it’s wet and digging when it’s dry is possible… but, aligning with the weather and season you’re in might make for a much more productive use of time.

Inner work prompt: What season are you in? How can you align your present efforts to maximize that current experience?

On Feeling Empty Inside

Published on May 25, 2024

I finished uploading quotes from The Prophet today (you can read my 18 favorites here).

My overall favorite is one that echoes an idea I got tattooed on my arm—which is of a majestic exposed roots tree that reminds me that the branches of happiness can only go as high as the roots of sadness go deep. The line from The Prophet goes:

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (Page 27)

…Which, I found to be another powerful, analogous way to look at and move through sorrow. Because it really does feel like a carving away at your being… which I think is where the descriptions of feeling “empty” or “hollow” or “dead” inside might come from.

But, with that emptiness… with that space… comes a future opportunity.

And it may not happen that day nor may it happen a week or a month after. But, eventually, that space that was carved from sorrow can become precisely the vessel needed to contain more of the opposite… more joy… more wonder… more love… and quite possibly even more than you had room to carry (or could fully appreciate) before.

Human Reboots

Published on May 23, 2024

It’s human to want to shut down after a painful experience.

It’s almost as though the magnitude of open processes that hard times bring forth can cause an overwhelm that throttles our internal ability to get anything/everything else done—like how a computer creeps to a halt when we have too many applications, tabs, and background processes open.

…What you can usually do automatically you can’t even get started on; what usually takes ten minutes suddenly takes an hour; what usually feels fun and easygoing feels frustratingly heavy and obligatory.

What’s important during times like this is to recognize the situation for what it is—a time when your system needs to reboot.

…Because trudging onward when your mind is spinning that rainbow-thinking-wheel-of-death isn’t to choose onward at all—it’s completely counterproductive.

What’s needed is a reset. What’s needed is time and space to power down. What’s needed is a clearing of everything that’s already open in the mind—not a stubborn press forward that only continues to open (and throttle) more and more.

Heaviness Serves A Purpose

Published on May 21, 2024

With heaviness comes slowness, naturally.

And one lesson I’m trying to absorb is that of acceptance—the one that doesn’t fight reality or curse the resistance, but relaxes into the moment for what it is and tries to instead move forward with whatever it presents.

And if heaviness is what I’ve been given, then maybe slowness is how I’m supposed to respond… so that I might stop fighting and cursing and rushing around from place to place and can start intentionally noticing, settling, and feeling instead.

When Life Is Fair

Published on April 30, 2024

“If life is fair, and it will be, it will serve you immeasurable beauties, joys and pleasures—you will feel at times that you do not have the capacity to take them in. You will. Our hearts they are boundless. If life is fair, and it will be, it will bring you huge, merciless sorrows. Devastations of your boundless heart. I wish for you the grace to persevere and accept them across time, for that is the only way these kinds of things can be taken in.”

Dan Weiss

While it is undeniably true that life is unfair in the circumstances into which we are born (i.e. socioeconomic status, parents, access to resources, etc), and in how some people are born into and taken from this world without a fighting chance, it’s also true that for most of us, life is fair in how we’re all going to feel the entire spectrum of human emotions.

…We’re each going to feel joy and pleasure just as we’re each going to feel sorrow and devastation. We’re each going to feel the mesmerizing beauty of love just as we’re each going to feel the heart-wrenching pain of loss. We’re each going to feel grateful and sentimental; nervous and insecure; jealous and enraged; lonely and shameful; amazed and confused; euphoric and peaceful…

…Not at the same times and not in equal proportions, but in full nonetheless. So when you’re thriving, soak it all the way in. And when you’re struggling, remember, you’re never alone. And just because you’re feeling something different than us, doesn’t mean we won’t or don’t feel that, too. Be patient and be kind…

…Because on this front—life is fair.

Fixing Feelings

Published on April 18, 2024

I started uploading quotes from Crying In H Mart by Michelle Zauner this week to MoveMe Quotes. And one of the quotes I uploaded today was:

“Sometimes my grief feels as though I’ve been left alone in a room with no doors. Every time I remember that my mother is dead, it feels like I’m colliding with a wall that won’t give. There’s no escape, just a hard surface that I keep ramming into over and over, a reminder of the immutable reality that I will never see her again.”

…I’m sure you’ve had moments in your life when people were sharing feelings of grief and you didn’t know how to reply.

What occurred to me as I was reading this today was, if she was explaining this feeling to me directly… this deep, complex, very personal feeling… there’s nothing to explain back.

There’s nothing to fix. There’s nothing to cure. There’s nothing to correct.

There’s no need for any kind of worldly insight or prognosis.

What should be offered in response is simply space.

A space that’s warm. A space that’s supportive. A space that’s patient.

…A space where that person and his/her feelings can fully be.

Because oftentimes, in our relentless pursuit of happiness, we mistakingly believe that grief or pain or sadness is something that should be avoided, cured, or suppressed. And with the world’s insight available to us in just a few thumb taps, it can be tempting to want to curate some type of wise, logical, rational response. When really, it’s this very process of giving ourselves and our feelings space to breathe that we give ourselves what we’re really after in life… depth.