for all that is remembered

Monday, April 27

Making Notes: The emotional side

"After a long talk with the cousins, there came the inner debate on the 'emotional side'. There have been gifts this Christmas, but nothing so precious as the thoughts that come from good conversation.

It is easy to despise the emotional side when we are distant from it. Messy, irrational, and essentially stupid becomes the judgement call of the day. It's the disgusting excess of suffering, made more vulgar in the stark daylight, which we dislike about the emotional side. The sense of redundancy and other polysyllabic words which the emotions bring.

But none of this is useful for the person in the grip of emotions. We often tell ourselves and others to leave the person well alone. After all, no one can pull that person out of the doldrums but his/herself.

Drown yourself wallowing in the night of self-pity, but without an audience, the bog will soon look less attractive.

It's a wintry isolation in the brilliant light of day. For some, the strong medicine is bracing, or even necessary. For others, it can be crippling. And for those who find themselves crippled by isolation, what else is there?

Sometimes it's not useful to pit fire against water, daylight against the night, or solid pine against sand. A combustion of like materials might instead yield a diamond-like silicate.

Perhaps we've known it by other names, in books which call themselves chicken soup for the soul, or self-help reminders. Sometimes it's helpful to push close to the heart, and fight fire with fire. In the process, we let something stronger, cleaner and better, win.

Despair paralyzes, but optimism pulls me up with a helping hand and gives me the drive to step beyond that little bubble of my existence."

Labels: Miscellaneous