This next part of the journey has challenged me, I'm not sure what it is about emotions. what makes them so difficult to explore? Yet to explore them with humility in mind as well makes it all the more challenging because I have to face my own. Humility asks us to know ourselves in the fullest way we can. By doing that I can better understand why I react, the way I do. In this case emotionally. What situations fire up my temper, my tears fall, the moments that surprise and scare me? Society would ask us to suppress such things, emoting at all would be inappropriate. Bad manners because it dampens the mood, and changes the atmosphere from what is planned. Much like our thoughts, our emotions should always be controlled. Under lock and key until they can be dealt with privately away from everyone. It is no wonder no one feels comfortable or embarrassed to emote at all because society has forgotten how and generations have lost that knowledge to teach us. That statement might not be true but it feels true, and that has weight and I feel it in the depths of me. The belief is that society wishes to control what it is I feel, the way I feel it and the duration. I don't know how true that thought is, but again it feels true.
When is it appropriate to feel? When does anyone have time to give their emotions space to breathe? When they are walled up inside us, with no place to flow?
I was no different, I treated my emotions the same as many would. I was locking them up, somewhere deep in myself. I was in the military for most of my young life and emoting while in stressful situations had dire consequences, often someone getting killed or seriously injured because of a loss of control. It isn’t so, in other areas of life, my experience is unique because not many understand what life is like in service to the queen and country. It might be difficult to explain.
Instead, I’ll make it easier on myself and break this down like I did in the chapter before, and ask important questions, perhaps in that reflection, the answers might flow into the conversation.
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