On Emotion – Part 1

Tender.  Liquid.  Fruity.  Hot.

As I sat to write this week’s post, I was angry.  Hot.  My father would use the word “hot” when he referred to the heat of anger.  You see, I had just been told by a friend that some thoughts I expressed were “emotional.”  I explained that my thoughts about the thing itself had not been emotional, but since the thoughts had been labeled “emotional,” well, yes, emotional was now what I was feeling because I felt I needed to defend myself.  I was hot.  Angry.  Yes, boys and girls, anger is most certainly an emotion.

So, lucky for me, after this little exchange, I was scheduled for an acupuncture treatment.  Acupuncture is great for balancing the emotions.  With needles in my face to calm my sinuses, and another needle in the middle of my forehead to calm me down, I experienced a river of emotions–all good, all placed within me by God. Every emotion is a beautiful reminder that I am a human being not a robot, and that feeling what I feel is to feel the creative, artistic energy of God.  I am a work of art.

As I drifted into a soft sleep, I felt a liquid-like sadness.  I was sad because I was tired of defending my emotions.  Sad because people are so afraid to feel.  I felt sad because throughout history, ignorant people have lobbed all kinds of aggressions at people to shut down the right to feel–especially, it seems, women.  Remember lobotomies, treatments for “hysteria,” sanatoriums, all the various kinds of nonsense to keep women from expressing what they feel?

Men do have feelings.  My acupuncturist–a man–said so.  They just fear (ummm…an emotion) their feelings.  Fellas, unexpressed anger can lead to chronic sadness.  Chronic sadness can lead to depression.  Depression, a confluence of unexpressed emotions, can lead to addictions.  Addictions repress the emotions.  Repressing emotions leads to…you get the vicious circle.

Looking at the thinner-than-hair needles in my arms and legs I thought about what my mother would think of acupuncture, and I began to laugh.  I felt myself relaxing into joy, and I felt the energy as it started in my belly and bubbled up like fruity champagne to my throat.  My face relaxed into a broad smile, an expression of–heh, heh–emotion.

It’s this chronic repression of feelings that results in—primarily men—blowing up work places and co-workers, flying small planes into IRS buildings, and all other sorts of passive aggressive expression.  You see, you cannot hide emotions.  Emotions will have their say.

In my semi-sleep state, I heard my acupuncturist talking to someone.  He asked “Are you tender here?”

“Tender” is one of my all time, super favorite words.  No other sound expresses the softness,  surrender, and release of love.  The supreme emotion.

Now some would say that this post is emotional.  Yes. It is.  But, that’s the price of being a human and not a robot.

Stay in the company of lovers.

Those other kinds of people, they each

Want to show you something.

A crow will lead you to an empty barn,

A parrot to sugar.  (Open Secret: Versions of Rumi by John Moyne and Coleman Barks)

Every peak moment has been flooded with emotion, and when I’m really lucky, that emotion has been love.