Free Your Emotions
The ability to keep one’s emotions under control has been touted as a major virtue in the art of self mastery. Our true feelings we have been told are capable of clouding our reason, therefore whenever we are faced with situations that place demands on our inner selves, strength of character requires that we stay calm and turn the situation over in our minds before taking action, if at all.
But it is my reasoning that it is better for us if we gave vent to our true feelings. It is not for nothing that emotions are part of our being, making attempts at stifling same unnatural, with dire consequences always lurking.
You never know what life will throw at you. Emotions therefore serve as pointers as to how you should respond in certain situations.
Let us look at the common emotions of anger, love and fear.
ANGER
Image courtesy guenterleitenbauer
Never go there they tell us. There are lessons to be learned from every situation. So even if someone hurts you so bad that your head screams retaliate, hold yourself, kiss the person and learn the lesson. In fact, if you look well you will see that it was even your fault that you were treated so badly in the first place.
So we have people who go about learning lessons every day of their lives and by the time they think of implementing the lessons they are dead.
What a waste.
If it is anger you feel, go ahead and express it. You will only feel better afterwards. You will save the energy you would have expended pondering whether or not you applied the right techniques to suppress your emotion if you chose the option of walking away.
I can imagine Jesus entering the temple to find people trading. Think about it. As anger wells up in him he instantly recognises it to be a “negative” emotion.
He quickly takes a couple of deep breadths to calm down, and then begins to consider the proper “tool” with which to tackle the emotion. He settles for replacing the negative emotion with a positive one. He bursts into singing and wears a wide grin (remember that even if you don’t feel like it, smile, and watch your mood brighten).
After his mood brightens he conditions his mind further by finding new vocabulary for what the people were doing. They were probably “discovering themselves” he reasons. Then finally because he must act, he gracefully approaches them, and intelligently expounds for their benefit the dangers of trading in the temple. The traders would have then gathered their things obediently and apologised. How about that for personal development?
This I say to you, if someone strikes you unduly and you are moved to retaliate, please find a stick from wherever and break his or her head.
It’s as simple as that.
It is no sign of weakness to let your anger be seen when it is necessary. What people find disconcerting is stoicism in the midst of calamity. There is certain eeriness about people who would not be bothered when it is natural to so be. That is why people who wouldn’t cry at the funeral of loved ones for instance are looked upon with suspicion. In Africa if you do that, you very certainly killed the person, even if he was seen jumping off an aeroplane at 10,000 feet.
But the truth is that whatever you try to suppress will surely come out one day; often with devastating consequences.
Does it not make you wonder how a notoriously peaceful person would pick up a machete and behead another and people are baffled that a “gentle” person can take such action?
When the situation was manageable and only a few blows required to settle things you chose to be “developed”. You were above anger. You leave it till when it became too much for you, and now you face jail or the hangman depending on where you are.
This has happened because your anger faculties, having been seriously underutilised needed to play catch up, hence your resounding action.
It is better that you are known and understood the way you really are so that there are no surprises. You will not fight Mike Tyson these days because you know he will bite off your ear. Because people are comfortable in that knowledge everybody is happy. If you decide to practice optimism here you do so at your own peril.
It is not altogether bad to think before taking action. But do so when answering examination questions or pondering an innovation. Serious life issues do not answer to the analytical mind. If it were so there would today be more answers than questions.
We will next consider the emotion of love.