Pay attention to your emotions
"Emotions are the next frontier to be understood and conquered. To manage our emotions is not to drug them or suppress them, but to understand them so that we can intelligently direct our emotional energies and intentions.... It's time for human beings to grow up emotionally, to mature into emotionally managed and responsible citizens. No magic pill will do it." ~ Doc Childre
Many of us believe that we need to keep a tight lid on our emotions. We fear that if we ever allow these emotions to be expressed, they will do serious damage.
But if we summon up the courage to truly feel our emotions, we discover that they don't last. The monster in the closet turns out to be a pussycat. In fact, if we are willing to experience our emotions completely, without resistance of any kind, they burn themselves out in only a few minutes.
The only thing that keeps emotions alive within you over long periods is your unwillingness to acknowledge them.
"By starving emotions we become humorless, rigid and stereotyped; by repressing them we become literal, reformatory and holier-than-thou; encouraged, they perfume life; discouraged, they poison it." ~ Joseph Collins
Source: Higher Awareness
It has been a difficult month . . . December usually is. There have been a myriad of emotions that have been my monster in the closet.
First of all, grief. It is the one emotion that is always looming and floating around my thoughts, which sometimes gets the best of me. This month it was compounded by two deaths in my extended family. One was expected, the other was totally unexpected and especially painful. Both deaths took my thoughts to places in the past where these two beautiful people touched my life and I contemplated their affect on my life. All of this thinking took me to other places of grief to a very disturbing journey of revisiting all those important people who have disappeared from my life, never to appear again. Grief can be a vicious cycle.
By all means, I did not starve my emotions this month. In fact, I fed them way too much. All the monsters were very hungry!
With my emotions in a delicate condition, this situation of no running water for yet another month had me to the point of wanting to scream at the top of my lungs without ceasing. How awful to have to live this way with no end in sight. This too shall pass . . .
The monsters from my childhood also stay at the edge of the closet, coming out to haunt and torment me randomly. Although the emotions seem trivial and silly to others, they are very real to me. They came at me fiercely around Christmas.
Although many of us try to sweep the monsters back in the closet, we all have them and must deal with them as they show themselves. Mine always come out with a vengeance around the holidays. Maybe I don't deal with them enough during the year.
Of course it was not all bad. The Captain and I had some very joyous times. We treated ourselves to a few culinary toys that we are thoroughly enjoying. Christmas Eve was spent at my cousin's house for the annual pig roast. We arrived early to experience the process of roasting a pig. It made me very happy to spend quality time with my aunt, uncle and cousins. The simple things in life are so special and these are the things I will remember when I think of this holiday season.
Hopefully the monsters will go back to hide in the closet as the ball drops on New Years Eve, marking the end of the holidays and the dreaded season. Having said all that I've said, they are way more joyous since I met The Captain. He's my hero and gift from God . . . the light at the end of the dark closet.
