Avoiding emotional pain probably should not be a high priority in life. Certainly, a life free from emotional pain is not an absolute value, not one of the verities. If I flee all emotional pain, I flee human interaction. I have hurt before; I will hurt again. I choose to make myself vulnerable to being hurt when I care about other people, and when I choose to love. Though this choice makes me vulnerable to pain, my personal experience is that it also opens me to joy. The risk of pain is the price of joy.
Some are so fearful of emotional pain they flee from all feelings. I have actually been with one timid little mouse who twitched back from the height of joy, disoriented by and fearful of its strength and power. The timid and fearful flee so far from their feelings they are lost. They deny all feelings, forcing them into a bland midrange, indistinguishable one from the other. When feelings do wash over these timid souls, they are blindsided. I believe it is better to risk pain, or actually to be hurt, than to deny all feelings. Both joy and sadness come to us via the same channel. Avoiding agony pushes away joy.
In fact, I believe feelings will out, to use an Elizabethan turn of phrase. Feelings will not be denied forever. The only choice we have is whether to acknowledge them in proximity to their causes (where we can deal with them in a healthy way), or to have them surprise and confuse us because they have returned to us disconnected from their source events. Inevitably returning from their hidden darkness, denied feelings overwhelm and push us into actions we do not understand, could not predict, and cannot control. We can only squeak in concert with the timid mouse, “I don’t know why. I can’t help it. It’s just the way I am.”
2 comments:
While searching blogs for the high school I attended too many years ago, I found your blog. You are also the only teacher that I remember. Thank you for your compassion and caring.
I need to apologize for something soo long ago- I was following you in the hall - sneaking up on you-
I think you thought I was mocking you- I was so ashamed that my actions were seen as mocking, I could not explain my innocence. Anyway, I am sorry that I did something that may have been seen as teasing. You were the last teacher that I would have wanted to hurt.
Happy early Valentine's Day.
I hope you come back to this post to read this. I have no memory of feeling mocked in the way you describe, so you can rest at ease on that. I am pleased to be remembered well by my students. When things grow difficult, notes such as yours comfort and strengthen me.
Thank you.
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