Learning To Live With Your Emotions
My Childhood
I had a miserable childhood. I say: "I had." Past Simple Tense.
Not because I'm not a child any longer, but because from today's time perspective, I see that it wasn't quite true.
Yes, I felt miserable for most of my childhood, often being sad and having occasional impressions that the world existed for a sole reason to make me miserable. Surprising paranoia for a 7-8 year boy! Meantime, a vast turnover took place. Today, I know that everything that has happened and is still happening is because of the overall progress; the Evolution.
It's an unbelievable fact that the development, for a major number of "ordinary" human beings, is possible only through pain and suffering. Only through these experiences can a man get precious life lessons and allow them (the lessons) to become a part of his being. Still, we are incapable of seeing the "big picture" and often the forest stays unseen because of our blind obsession with the trees.
We try very hard to avoid so called "negative emotions", refuse to face them, and thus exhaust their emotional charge. Instead we often stubbornly cling to the pleasure, enjoyment, satisfaction and so forth, for as long as possible. However, in long terms seen, we cause an opposite effect. Why?
When we experience something pleasant and are overwhelmed with joyful feelings, we become anaesthetized. In other words, we let the ecstasy last and lose ourselves in exultation and tend to keep these feelings around as long as possible. That, however, is simply NOT possible. The basic attribute of Life is - Change, or as someone, sometime, had said, "Nothing is eternal, nothing is unchangeable but the Change itself." So, our efforts to keep "Status Quo" go in vain.
Further, one must have in mind that there is NOT movement in "Status Quo", thus there is not progress. Of course, at first sight, maybe the modest improvement of the unacceptable situation to any better, is enough for one to cling to it and persistently try to keep it, but that way one limits themselves not to achieve anything higher, better, whatever possible.
Moreover, if we take a look at the situation from a higher standpoint, an absolute standpoint (if possible), on which I insist, then we can see that in short-term, temporary improvement of some situation, there is no long-standing progress, which is a single aim of the Universe, seen as Unique Entity.
Upsetting events can't be avoided; negative emotions also. We can't preserve ourselves in a promising state that nobody we love will die or stop evil people from hurting us. So, if we can't stop negative emotions from coming to us, what's the best we can do? Is there any best?
Yes, the best and only practice when these emotions are around is to let them be as they are, and even more important when they are. Any attempt to suppress them, we take our chances of "acquiring" a trauma that will surely find its way out, mostly in some "wrong" moment. How does it happen?
Suppressed feelings are not forgotten. A human's subconsciousness is a vast storage room of all our experiences. In case they were not left to appear, emerge, and be as they were and when they were, in their natural intensity, they will operate from our subconsciousness and program our present attitude.
Not being aware of this, we are often surprised by our own attitudes and reactions. And we are not in a position to connect the suppressed experiences and their emotional charge with our current behavior. But if we leave them be, in their natural intensity and setting, they will pass through us and dispose off their emotional charge at the moment it takes place. Later on, we will recall them as events without attributes. We will have memories, images, sounds, scents etc, but there will be no pain in it, no charge, and most important, we will not be afraid and refuse to recall them.
Ultimately, the life lessons embedded in the adversities are learned at once. They come as enlightening moments, insights that clear our sight and spread our horizons.
Yes, I had miserable childhood. Past Simple Tense. And I'm thankful to the Existence for that. If it had been otherwise, most probably I would have clung to the attractiveness and lost the possibility to see that the beauty is in being an active factor in the process of Change, manifesting in its unpredictability and excitement that it brings along.
Copyright 2003 Mitko Keramitchiev --- Macedonia