It’s been a week of ups and downs for me. And towards the end of this week I’ve been repeating a refrain over and over again in my mind. It goes…
Every Little Thing
will be all right. Every little thing will be okay.
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.
― The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
I like to glide along through my daily life focusing on and generating what one might call positive feelings — joy, gratitude, wonder, appreciation. But I am discovering that my body pays a price when I repress the so-called negative emotions — fear, anger, grief, regret.
Jon had a scary health episode this week. We sought immediate medical assessment and fortunately he was able to come home with a prescription for medication and instructions to take it easy until symptoms decrease. It appears that the medication is helping a lot and he’s feeling much better.
There Are No Negative Emotions
His health episode brought up all sorts of feelings in me about this stage of life that we are in, which I did my best to ignore and repress.
For a couple of days I was short-fused with Jon, grumpy, tired, and in a lot of pain. But I kept trying to find ways to feel joy, gratitude, and appreciation. At some point my body just said, “No!” And when I looked inside myself I was faced with lots of anger layered over fear and grief.
Our intuition and instincts are informed by our full range of emotions, including the heavy and unpleasant ones. Shutting down any of our emotions diminishes our connection to our innate wisdom.
This is why accepting all of our emotions as valid and valuable is so important. It’s worth saying again: the quickest way to block our ability to access our emotional wisdom is to consider half of our emotions as “negative” and something to avoid or change.
In order for our emotions to be helpful to us, we must engage with what we are truly feeling, not what we would rather be feeling.
— Jessica Moore, Why There Are No Negative Emotions
It’s scary facing the possible loss of loved ones and friends and it’s frustrating when despite one’s best efforts those days of feeling good moving my body are fewer and far between. Top that off with news of war, famine, the extinction of countless species, and climate change and it’s easy to spiral down into despair.
Maybe that’s why the Tibetan Buddhists teach us to contemplate our own death and realize that everything is impermanent. Perhaps my lessons in this time of my life are about impermanence and allowing and embracing all of my emotions. Sometimes it pisses me off that I learned some my most important lessons in life, about unconditional love, respect, and choosing joy, so late in my life. Then I realize that I’m lucky to have learned the lessons I have learned, no matter when or how I learned them.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold itagainst your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.— Mary Oliver
Little Things, Great Joy
Despite the roller coaster of heavy emotions I’ve been feeling I have also been filling up with great joy and appreciation for every little thing of beauty that I find in my life. Yesterday a pileated woodpecker visited a tree across the street from us. I managed to make a few photos of it through my kitchen window. I love these big beautiful birds.
Then I was able to photograph another woodpecker at my feeders, just as it had a peanut in its beak. The alstroemeria flowers I bought almost two weeks ago are still beautiful though some of them have begun drooping and losing petals. I am finding beauty in their aging.
Today the leaves have been raining down from all of the trees in our yard. The big cottonwood beside the pond is almost bare. And the top of the river birch tree is also becoming bare. Our neighbor’s oak tree across the pond has turned a most beautiful color. And these few days of sunshine and warmth this week have warmed my heart as well.
So here is my suggestion for you this week, my friends. Allow yourself to feel all of your emotions. Let them flow and inform you about what is important to you. And look for beauty, choose joy, spread kindness.
May you walk in beauty.
0 Comments