Ever been on a road trip? If so, you know that it takes a lot of planning, such as deciding the route you’ll take from departure to destination or how many stops you’ll need to make. You’ll likely have to improvise along the way, relying on internal cues like hunger pangs or the need to pee when deciding whether to make a pit stop, and external cues like unplanned or re-routed traffic causing you to slow down or change direction.
When it comes to the journey that is our life, which cues do we rely on then? Our early external cues come from family and greater society, while our internal cues come from our physical and emotional needs. But as the journey progresses and our paths grow increasingly uncertain, like when graduating from high school or college, many of the road signs we rely on start disappearing, while newer ones pop up, only these are in foreign languages. How do we create a path forward based on signs we can’t even read?
It is essential for all of us to learn the language of our bodies. Often others will learn to read our body language even better than we can. Imagine a blind author who writes a masterpiece that only others can read, while she, herself, has only the vaguest notion of what she’s written and why. Just as written languages are made up of nouns, verbs, and adjectives, the language of the body is composed of its own parts - the five physical senses, conscious and unconscious emotions and beliefs, and intuition. Sadly, in today’s world, we give more priority to learning how to read and analyze written texts, instead of our own bodies and psyches.
Feelings are messengers in need of a translator. Too often, when we experience a feeling that gets in the way of our plans, we prefer to ignore it and stuff it back into our subconscious. The truth is, the harder we look away, the harder our feelings will work to grab our attention. Wouldn’t it be better to just listen to these messengers the very first time they show up at our door?
So many books have already been written about all the various emotions, but for the purpose of this essay, I will only talk about four - pain, fear, grief, and shame/guilt. I hope to elaborate on others - excitement, infatuation, empathy, and love - in Part 2 of this series.
Pain
In the words of beloved author C.S. Lewis, “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. So God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
By far, the least favorite of all our feelings, pain, is just as crucial as pleasure. One cannot exist without the other. When experiencing emotional pain, though, how often do we question what it is trying to tell us. Do we sit with it, like a friend in need, offer it tea, a hug, a word of compassion? Do we ask it what prompted its arrival and invite it to stay for as long as it needs? In reality, we’d rather shut the door in its face. But if we resist this initial impulse, we will realize, our pain is actually bequeathing us priceless gifts - beautiful and piercing truths, gems of self-awareness, and the silken relief it leaves behind when it finally departs.
Think about the last time you experienced pain. Perhaps it manifested through another emotion, like anger, resentment, despair, or loneliness. Was it due to heartbreak, rejection, loss, isolation, or a deficiency of some other nature? As a child, we feel pain when we’re hungry, separated from our parents, or not given the toy we desire. A little older, and it’s a lost opportunity to make friends, public humiliation, lack of achievement, or jilted affections. Pain is most often seen through the lens of lack.
But what if we re-framed the narrative to look at what pain is gifting us instead? The opportunity to become independent, learn how to bounce back, be perseverant, and appreciate our worth. What if we trusted the universe and understood it was using feelings like pain as a means of communicating with us and helping us to evolve? As author A. Helwa says in Secrets of Divine Love, “Do not live your life in reaction to what people have done to you, but live your life in gratitude for all that God has done for you.”
Fear
No matter how far you make it in life, fear will always be hiding in wait for you. Many of us are taught by our families to fear God and be on our best behavior to avoid punishment, be it in the pits of hell or behind the palms of our parents’ hands. We’re told to fear falling behind in school and getting bad grades because otherwise, we won’t get into a good college. And if we don’t get into a good college, we won’t get a decent job; and if we don’t get a decent job, no one will want to marry us, and we’ll spend the rest of our days poor, alone, and miserable.
Over time and with the benefit of our growing wisdom, many of these fears eventually dissipate, only to be replaced by others, such as the fear of being oneself. Each and every time we are asked to express ourselves with honesty and authenticity, reflecting our true beliefs and values, it is terrifying. We must ask ourselves, what are we really afraid of - that people will ridicule us, disagree with us, attack us? The more pointedly we can locate the deeper origins of our fear, the easier it will be to create a plan to tackle it.
My greatest fear is of drowning. Whatever trust I had in the universe was shattered the day I almost drowned when I was 9. I have steered clear of swimming pools and large bodies of water since then, but I’ve also sat on the sidelines, missing out on so much fun, because I was too busy drowning in my own fear. Apart from the fear of pain and dying, which most human beings have, this incident instilled within me an all-encompassing anxiety about taking risks and letting go. I’m trying to get to the root of these deeper fears in an effort to build up the courage to, eventually, learn how to swim. The day I’m able to do so, will be the day I truly put my trust in the universe (and the buoyant nature of water) and become comfortable with letting go. In a way, the birth of a very specific fear within me, during my childhood, inadvertently created a test which I recurringly faced throughout my life, to assess my psychological and spiritual evolution - a test I have yet to pass.
Like pain, fear is another messenger that's hard to ignore. Sometimes, the more scared we are of doing something, the more we know we're on the right path. We only truly fear failure when we're working towards something we care about most.
Grief
Although grief is yet another subset of pain, I feel it deserves its own mention. Grief causes us to come undone. It reveals us at our lowest, sagging under the weight of heavy emotions that are begging us to slow down and relieve ourselves of our burdens. Crying is a crucial form of energy release, as is expressing ourselves, whether in a journal or to a friend.
I believe tears are divine kisses. They remind us we are alive and pulsating with emotions, each tear a testament to our efforts, endurance, and acceptance. A single tear holds an entire story and, by releasing that tear with intention, we are letting go of that story and all the grief that comes with it. We might have to shed several thousand tears until we completely let go, but each time we cry, we feel lighter and more liberated.
Shame and Guilt
Regardless of the emotion, we should avoid becoming overly immersed in it for too long. We must ultimately be able to step back and view our situation from an elevated and objective viewpoint. This approach can be hardest to take when it comes to emotions like shame and guilt, which, much like fear and disgust, reflect our shadow selves at the very core.
So what exactly is a shadow self? Revered psychologist, Carl Jung, came up with the term to refer to all those desires and feelings we have that we deny due to social unacceptability, such as our desire to lie, steal, cheat, abuse, or feel victimized. Getting to know our shadow selves and owning up to the truths deep within our own subconscious takes tremendous patience and courage. In “making the darkness conscious”, as Jung phrased it, our enhanced self-awareness and acceptance of all versions of ourselves will go a long way in helping us to combat our shame and guilt.
According to the late author, Debbie Ford, “The saintly and the cynical, the divine and the diabolical, the courageous and the cowardly: all these aspects lie dormant in us and will act out if they are not recognized and integrated into our psyches. Many of us are frightened of the light as well as the dark. Many of us are frightened to look within ourselves, and fear has us put up walls so thick we no longer remember who we really are.”
The Self is not something to be ashamed or afraid of. It is a beautiful landscape of unknown treasures that simply longs to be known.
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Our feelings are, quite literally, the friends we take along with us on our existential road trip. Spend your journey getting to know your friends better, so that, over time, you can rely on their wisdom to help you navigate the twists and turns ahead. If you neglect them, just like any other friend, they will become resentful and shout even louder to be heard, until your car is full of nothing but noise. Wouldn’t you rather enjoy the sweetness of silence? The comfort of sitting amongst friends who understand you so well, without your even having to say a word?
At the end of the day, no feeling, however heightened or base, is a waste. Each one carries valuable information for us, so that we may better understand ourselves and navigate the trajectories and terrain of our individual journeys.
If I could ‘like’ this a thousand times, I would. One of the best pieces of writing I have read this year. Powerful, beautiful and I saw parts of myself in each part of this. I pray your wisdom and words are able to reach thousands. Thank you for writing this - I can’t wait for Part 2! 💛