Feel

I recommend getting your heart trampled on to anyone

I recommend biting off more than you can chew to anyone.

I recommend sticking your foot in your mouth at any time

Feel free

Throw it down

(the caution blocks you from the wind)

Hold it up (to the rays)

You wait and see when the smoke clears

Alanis Morrisette

You Learn 1992

I used to hate sudden flare-ups of emotions. It felt like the rug was being yanked beneath me. When I would find myself in this situation, I found that there are actually two parallel events going on. First, there was the emotion triggered within the situation. At the same time, I would get annoyed with myself for being desperately unable to “control” the emotion. The first one is of being upset, and the other one is of me, digging a deeper hole because I’m upset at myself that I am angry.

Oscar Wilde said: “I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them and to dominate them.” Oscar Wilde’s early lifestyle seemed to echo that if his protagonist in his only published novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. The beautiful Dorian, pursued beauty and pleasure above all else and was consumed with nothing else. He paid no attention to sadness, pain, guilt, frustration nor anxiety; he instead chose to distract himself again and again. Dorian Gray spirals into a horrific, fearful caricature. His creator, Oscar Wilde, also dies destitute and alone. Oscar and Dorian did not paint a pretty picture toward the ends of their lives.

These fictional and actual stories might be a bit extreme, but everyone has had their own ways of avoiding feelings.  Who hasn’t’ haad “retail therapy”? Who hasn’t had a salt-fat-carbohydrate smorgasboard heretofore known as a “food trip”? Hey, entire industries feed on emotional avoidance.  As it grows and grows, it fuels a  generational way of thinking that becomes de riguer. It just becomes the norm.

I recall a recent experience I had while attending a painting workshop in Singapore. Toward the end of the day, I found myself falling into exhaustion at the creative effort of painting such huge paintings. (We were painting on large rolls of Manila paper).  At the closing session of the first day, we were asked what were new things for us, or new experiences.  I blurted that I was surprised that I felt “so tired”. A collective gasp echoed throughout the room. I was abruptly reminded where I was. (Hmmmm, does this have anything to do with the Gallup poll in 2012 where Singapore was ranked to be the unhappiest country and 46% of the respondents didn’t report laughing or smiling?)

This is why  Lenten sacrifices are so invaluable to our personal growth.  When we give up THAT ONE THING that we crave, we love, we reach out for … we actually allow ourselves to tune in to the emotion (rather than the potato chip).  When we allow ourselves to feel the pain or anger, we also increase our ability to feel the positive emotions of joy, excitement and love. Most importantly, when we recognize these emotions in ourselves, we are also more sensitive to how these occur and present in others. The Lenten sacrifices help us to become more human. It teaches us to live and refines our senses to the things that we really need to stay alive for.

Kumare Alanis says it so well.

You live you learn, you love you learn

You cry you learn, you lose you learn

You bleed you learn, you scream you learn

You grieve you learn, you choke you learn

You laugh you learn, you choose you learn

You pray you learn, you ask you learn

You live you learn.