Kavita cries at the drop of a hat: she is labelled as emotional. Abhishek is angry at the smallest of things: he is labelled as one who cannot handle his emotions. Surbhi has many friends and good relationships with them: she is labelled emotionally intelligent.
As I was writing this article about emotions, the first question that came was, “What comes to your mind when you talk about emotions?” And immediately it struck me how overpowered we are by our logical brain, that to talk about emotions we also need to think. Then, as I took a pause, I appreciated the mindfulness working in my life. This was a real transformational moment.
On a daily basis we all undergo different emotions in the day. We say I feel happy, I feel confident, I feel low. We never say I think happiness, or I think confidence. This is because as much as you think that you are confident, you can only be sure when you feel and behave confident. So emotions are what we feel.
Positive and negative emotions
The duality of life has created a big divide in all of us. Being positive is the goal for many to be happy in life.
As far as I remember, when studying maths we never discriminated between positive and negative numbers; both were equally respected. Then why do we discriminate between negative and positive emotions? Why can we not be OK with having both, accepting both and feeling both, and still not judging ourselves or anybody based on these?
For some time, just try using the emotion that you don’t like. Does it change something in you?
When we accept all emotions in ourselves, we will stop labelling people around us based on the emotions they express, because every emotion is for that moment and then it changes.
Rumi, the famous 13th-century poet, expressed this beautifully in his poem The Guest House, which begins: “This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.” His poem is an invitation towards being mindful, awake, and loving to whatever present-moment experience we may receive at any given moment.
Let it be
Now that we have embraced all emotions, are we good to let go of the idea of good or bad emotions?
When talking of letting go, we may feel that we need to let go of certain emotions to be happy. That is not what letting go means here. Letting go is to let go of the labelling, the distinction, the discrimination, the wall that we have built between each other because of emotions. Which means: let it be. The shift is from doing to being. We need not go after positive emotions nor reject so-called negative ones; just let it be.
Every emotion has its own flavour and there is no perfect recipe for being an emotionally stable person. We need to shed our barriers and instead build bridges so that every emotion can travel from one place to another. As Rumi reminds us, our task is to find the barriers we have built within ourselves.
Every being is emotional, because each of us has some emotion which is dominating. So we need to embrace each emotion, feel it, and let it be.
First published on LinkedIn.
