The Book of Days IV (A Journal) : Emotions

Copyright 2010- All Rights Reserved

Emotions. People don’t like to name emotions. Don’t like to talk directly about them. For example, nowadays, people say things like “She has feelings for him.” When I hear that, I want to ask…which feelings are you talking about? Although I’ve figured out that the word feelings is used as a synonym, most times, for the word love.

It annoys me when people aren’t direct about their feelings. I do understand that when you name them, you become vulnerable in a sense. Still, I have to ask: Are people afraid to name the emotion love? Maybe. Love is powerful, named or unnamed. It is a force to be reckoned with. But it’s a good force, I think. So why are we afraid of the good?

Last night, I read about feelings. A quote from John Bradshaw: “When out E-motions are not mirrored and named, we lose contact with one of our vital human powers.”

Yes. I understand why naming them is important. When you ignore them as if they didn’t exist, it can get you in trouble. They don’t like to be ignored or rendered invisible. The mirroring part of the quote I had to think about for a while. I think when my parents, my mother, to be exact, would not acknowledge ( read “mirror”) certain emotions I had when I was growing up, it did some not-good things. For one, it can make you crazy when your caregiver doesn’t acknowledge/mirror/validate that you have feelings whether those feelings are “approved of” or not.

The point is not to approve of them, I think. The point is to acknowledge. Without shaming or negative judgement. What I remember is being told that certain feelings, like anger or dislike, were “inappropriate.” The message was that I had no right to feel the way I did because my mother didn’t approve of a particular feeling that I was feeling. Situations like that are shaming. What happens is that emotion gets hooked into the shame feeling so you struggle not to feel it because the shame part eats you alive.

I read once that emotions have no label in actuality. That we label them “good” or “bad” and in all the places in between. I read that emotions simply exist and we weigh them down with the baggage of our experiences. The weight that we give them translate into the labels. But those labels are false faces. A mask. Or perhaps a delusion.

Anyway.
I didn’t know that our emotions are vital powers. What a fascinating thing to contemplate. How can emotions be powers? Much less “vital” powers. Power is a force, energy. Synonyms for “vital” are: vibrant, life-supporting, invigorating, alive, indispensable. If emotions give us fuel to act then I suppose they are powerful. This makes me think of emotions as powerful “magic.” Is that possible? I don’t know, but why not?

Also I read that emotions—for instance, sadness, fear, guilt, shame, joy, anger—give us fuel to act.” Power, again. Energy. Fuel. Propulsion. Do we act from the fuel of emotions? Well, it’s easy to point to anger and say that it fueled my actions. But what about guilt? What about shame? What kinds of behaviors do those things fuel in me? In us?

Many people think of feelings, of emotions as things that make you weak, vulnerable, leaving you without defense. Or they think of emotions as things uncontrollable, or things needing to be controlled and tamed… wild things. Things needing to be imprisoned.

But if emotions are powers—vital powers, then they shouldn’t be imprisoned. If emotions are vital powers… life-giving, invigorating powers, then they are gifts, it seems to me.

What do you think?

The Book of Days III: Back in the Saddle

Copyright 2009- All Rights Reserved

No matter if I’ve been out of town or not, transitioning back from summer vacation into teaching the fall semester of college is usually easy. I always have my syllabus copied and ready for each class since the copy machine is subject to break down from last minute overuse by instructors. No hassle. No frazzle. But…this time was different. I had to cope with an unexpected problem that started almost as soon as I landed in L. A.—jet lag. I haven’t really been plagued with jet lag before last week and it took me by surprise. Had I known that it would show up, I’d have made some changes in coming back to town.

Time zone change. Jet lag is born out of crossing time zones. Crossing time zones throws off the biological clock and upsets the body’s natural patterns and rhythms based on day and night, sunrise and sunset. According to what I later found out, a two hour change isn’t too bad but a three hour change is trouble. I had gone through a three hour change coming home from vacationing all summer down south. My watch said that I’d landed at 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon but my body recognized the time as 6 p.m. It was ready to wind down but now that I was home, there was way too much for me to do to give in to that.

My first class was going to be at 9 a.m. the next day and I had to get ready, jet lag or not. In the sixteen hours between my plane landing and walking into the classroom, I greeted my neighbors who’d kept watch on my mail and my apartment, unpacked and put my clothes away, drove to the grocery store for food, put my dinner together and ate, made some telephone calls, put my classroom materials in my pack bag, laid out my clothes, checked a box full of mail accumulated over three months, and, finally, at 10 p.m., I went to bed. I didn’t sleep well—not a good thing; still, I got up at 6:30 a.m. the next morning. Although I was feeling tired, I walked my neighbor’s dogs for 10 minutes (my usual morning exercise routine), fixed and ate my breakfast, bathed, dressed, and left for work.

For three months, my days had started around 10:30 or 11 in the morning and I’d enjoyed living life at a decidedly slower pace. No more. Here I was back to alarm clocks, time schedules, negotiating morning traffic, and setting myself up to do or accomplish entirely too many things in one twenty-four hour period. As I drove to work, I heard on the radio that the weather would be in the upper 90’s. Great. I thought I’d left that kind of weather in Georgia. But here it was again! By the time I got through my classes, I was definitely feeling jet lag symptoms—grogginess, tiredness , mild depression, and disorientation. The heat made things worse and I asked myself a thousand times what I’d been thinking of when I’d booked a plane back without giving myself a day or two to rest before going to work.

I was fading away by Monday evening and I knew I had to find a solution…quick, fast, and in a hurry. Logic and a little internet research helped me come up with a plan. What I decided to do was slow way down for the rest of the week, stay in a cool place more often than not, take afternoon naps and cool baths at night, eat light meals, and put a limit on the kind of exercise I’d do every day for a week. It’s worked pretty well. Next time I travel, though, I’ll find out what other things I can do to minimize jet lag. That includes coming back home a couple of days earlier, not a few hours before I have to go to work.

Jet lag made it a bit harder and longer that first week to shift back into L.A.’s fast lane. I do miss the lazy days of summer, the sound my “Songbird” singing me awake every morning, my leisurely breakfast each morning with my summer hostess. Oh, well. Time to take my sweet memories of summer into fall and the new school year. It’s back in the saddle for me.

The Book of Days II: Words Worth Heeding

Copyright 2009-All Rights Reserved

We only have the present moment. Here's how to make the most of 24 hours, according to an article in Bottom Line magazine.

1. Don't carry your "to-do" list in your head. Write it down. You can't remember everything.

2. Don't multi-task. It's stressful. Stress does not make for doing things well. It's really not efficient. As Confucius said, "A man who chases 2 rabbits, catches neither."

3. Slow down. Focus on 1 high priority at a time. Take your time. Your best thinking comes when you're focused and relaxed.

4. Get enough sleep. Research shows that productivity, clarity, alertness, judgment, creativity, memory, motivation, cheerfulness, relaxation all thrive on adequate sleep. All suffer when you don't get enough.

5. Do what you love. Make time for it. Even better, do it full time if you can. You deserve it.