When my emotions get really heavy on my heart, it aches. My eyes burst with tears and I breathe out heavily as I release my sobs and wail like a baby. Instinctively, I breathe in again, but my heart shakes until air reaches the deepest core of my chest. The process repeats itself until some internal force of hope tells my mind to pull my body off of the ground and look for something good, even if I must look into a mirror and stare at my eyes to see that there is goodness in the present and happiness in the future, regardless of the misery in the past that caused such a breakdown.
When I think about life as a physical experience during a very emotional moment, I realize that emotions are as natural to life as the respiratory, urinary, and digestive systems are for the body. It is essential to listen to my body tell me what to do each
and every second of the present: when to eat, when to sleep, and when to
use the restroom. However, all of these things are simple behaviors that all animals must learn in order to survive. Humans learn best when our emotions are involved, which we are taught about as kids but do not actually learn until we experience them for ourselves. Emotions analyze experiences from the past and determine which behaviors should be repeated based on the ones that brought about the most pleasurable outcomes. For example, after a certain age, a kid will be made fun of and feel embarrassed if she cannot control her bladder. Her emotional pain will teach her to change her physical behavior and hold her bladder until she can find a restroom. Similarly, a child who receives praise from his teachers and parents on a well-done project will link positive emotions to working hard and, therefore, will likely strive to succeed in an effort to bring more pleasurable feelings into his life. Essentially, our emotions are what teach us to survive and lead us to the things we accomplish. So, this phenomenon referred to as life is really a mixture of the body combining with the emotions to make humans physical beings of mental creation.
Just as the body is free to breath whenever it wants, I try to be honest with my emotions because that is part of letting my spirit be free. I love going to the edge of my emotional capacity where my mind's eye can clearly see what I am feeling and what is causing me to have these feelings. I also have to let myself dig for things that my mind has been suppressing in order to release my entire spirit. It is in these "emotional places" of truth and freedom that I am vulnerable—things I may not have ever thought stand out and I understand the experiences in my life. From these findings, I create ways to make changes in my life, fix problems, and produce amazing work.
The truth about life is that there is always good and there is always bad, but they are all just part of life. As John Mayer puts it, "You're going to have at least one moment a week where you don't feel right. But maybe it won't feel so wrong if you know it's supposed to happen." Sometimes one extreme seems more abundant and one seems absent. In these emotionally heavy times, I take a moment to forget about all emotion and just focus on the bodies version of the present, which is the breath. I can change my emotional perspective from negative to positive, renew my hope, and move my attention towards the positive pieces that make up the whole, leaving the negative pieces untouched and unnoticed, like the last slices of pie after a filling Thanksgiving dinner.
Just smile and breathe...everything is going to be alright.
