Pine Lake

Feelings (Part 1)

Here, in no specific order, are some of my thoughts about Feelings:


1.  You Cannot Choose How You Feel Right Now

Do not feel guilty about anything you feel.  Ever.  Human beings can not choose their emotions.  You can try to not be aware of your feelings - to distract or medicate your feelings or hide them outside of your awareness, but I have rarely seen good come of that kind of self ignorance.

You can control what you do, what you say, how you behave, but not how you feel right now.


2.  What you Do (and Say, and Attend to) Can Influence The Feelings You Will Have 

This seems like I'm contradicting myself here, but what I mean here is that the choices you make about what you do moment to moment will of course impact how you feel in the future.  If you choose to criticize yourself or focus your attention on a worry of yours, you will predictably feel more hurt or angry or worried in the near future.  If you decide to skip a meal you will probably feel more hungry later.  Pretty self evident.


3.  You Can (and Do) Have Many Feelings at the Same Time

Often intense feelings can seem too strong, too overwhelming.  Something to try and be aware of that can help is the fact that you are never feeling just one thing.  Even if you are very Sad or Angry or Hungry, you may also be able to notice that you might be Amused or Tired or Loving.  Noticing a richer array of your feelings is like being aware of more wavelengths of light or having a bigger palette of colors to paint with.


4.  No Single Feeling Lasts Forever

This doesn't mean you will necessarily stop Loving someone, or that you will stop Missing someone you care about who is gone from your life.  But feelings are connected to memories and are created by your mind moment by moment.  Each of your feelings will ebb and flow as you remember and forget and remember and forget...


5.  Having a Feeling Doesn't Affect Anyone Else Unless You Choose to Let It

Feeling like you want to punch someone doesn't actually hurt them (unless you punch them).  Feeling like giving someone a hug doesn't let them feel loved unless you decide to give them a hug.  Don't confuse Feelings with Behavior.  You need to choose to do something or not.


6.  Other People Can Understand How You Feel Better Than You Might Think

If you are willing to let someone know how you are feeling there is a pretty good chance that they have had their own version of the same feeling at some point in their life.  We are all primates, and there is no new feeling under the sun.  Sorry, snowflake.


7.  Feelings are Data

What I mean is that having a feeling is a particular kind of thing that your mind is doing, and understanding what and why you might be feeling something can be quite informative.  Your feelings are not magical or privileged.  Feeling that something is true doesn't make it so.  Loving someone doesn't mean that being with them will be good for you; Hating someone by itself rarely justifies violence.  Feelings don't trump logic, nor do they rule you.  If you can keep your head, there is no reason to fear your feelings.

The Real Nature of Evil...

I have spent most of my career listening to people and their stories, and I have met more than my share of folks who have done horrific things.  Things like selling drugs, torturing relatives, killing people.  You might not like to hear this, but none of those people were Monsters.  A couple of them were emotionally damaged and wanted revenge, some were on drugs, a few were temporarily out of their minds, and many were so focused on their own problems they had a hard time appreciating how what they did hurt others.  None of them acted primarily out of some "scary movie" kind of sadistic pleasure in causing others pain.

OK, there are a few people in this world we called sociopaths, or psychopaths, or antisocial personalities.  These people are said to mostly lack empathy - they don't have any way to appreciate how others feel and so behave entirely with their self-interest in mind.  Strangely they don't really seem Movie Monster Evil either, usually, because they aren't enjoying hurting others.  They cant really get true satisfaction out of hurting others anymore than they can get satisfaction out of caring for others.  They seem charismatic, and compelling at first, and then later  you sense how hollow and empty they are inside.  It seems more sad than scary.  I think these people are warped, but not really evil (though they can do some bad things).

If anything is really evil, I think it is when we ignore some kind of hurt or wrong caused to others; when we choose to avoid the painful truth in exchange for easy ignorance and by doing so deny our own culpability in the wrongdoing.  This is the Holocaust in it's most extreme form - and not just the few twisted sicko's behind the torture and killing of millions of jews, but even more the frightened silence and practiced ignorance of the greater population of Germans who "couldn't" bare to admit the truth to themselves and in doing so helped perpetrate a genocide.  History is full of nauseating examples:  people who pretended not to see the degradations of slavery, or child labor, or colonialism.  Those who deny the harms caused by racism or poverty or war.  

It is not that I believe we need to spend all of our time apologizing for crimes we didn't commit, or making up for the sins of our fathers.  There is no erasing the impact of generations of slavery and to think that you could even try is patronizing.  But in not acknowledging an ugly truth, refusing to see a crime or mistreatment because it may cause you to feel bad in some way is Evil, and it begets future acts of "not seeing" that go on to harm those already injured.  

You may think this whole diatribe doesn't have much to do with you, and though I wish that were true, it sadly isn't.  Every one of us struggles to avoid looking at, acknowledging the pain in others that would scare or hurt us the most.  It is not that I expect you to avoid hurting others all the time - that is impractical if not impossible.  I love you and want you to take good care of yourselves, even sometimes at the expense of someone else.  But I hope you have the strength of character to see your actions and the actions of others for what they are, and honestly acknowledge painful truths.  

I don't think hurting someone else is really the Evil act: I think real Evil is the willful ignorance of other's pain.

And Change is What I Believe In...

When I was young and full of graceAnd spirited a rattlesnakeWhen I was young and fever fellMy spirit, I will not tellYou're on your honor not to tell
I believe in coyotes and time as an abstractExplain the change, the difference betweenWhat you want and what you need, there's the keyYour adventure for today, what do you doBetween the horns of the day?
I believe my shirt is wearing thinAnd change is what I believe
When I was young and give and takeAnd foolish said my fool awakeWhen I was young and fever fellMy spirit, I will not tellYou're on your honor, on your honor
Trust in your calling, make sure your calling's trueThink of others, the others, they think of youSilly rule golden words make, practice, practice makes perfectPerfect is a fault and fault lines change
I believe, my humor's wearing thinAnd change is what I believe in
I believe my shirt is wearing thinAnd change is what I believe
When I was young and full of graceAs spirited a rattlesnakeWhen I was young and fever fellMy spirit, I will not tellYou're on your honor, on your honor
I believe in exampleI believe my throat hurtsExample is the checker to the key
I believe, my humor's wearing thinAnd I believe the poles are shiftingI believe my shirt is wearing thinAnd change is what I believe in

     --REM