Today We Talk About Emotions
Don't cling to things because everything is impermanent. Learn to detach yourself from emotions. But detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate fully. That's how you can leave it.
Take any emotion - Grief for a loved one or pain or fear from a task. If you hold back on these emotions and don't allow yourself to go through them, you can never get to being detached; you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain; you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.
But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what grief is. And only then you can say, 'All right, I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.'
How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we don't let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry. Or how we feel sorry for what we have done, but we don't say anything because we're frozen with the fear of what those words might do to the relationship.
Instead, our approach should be the exact opposite. Turn on the faucet. Wash with the emotion. It won't hurt you. It will only help. If you let the fear inside and pull it on like a familiar shirt, you can say to yourself, "All right, it's just fear; I don't have to let it control me. I see it for what it is."
Same for loneliness: you let go, let the tears flow, feel it completely - but eventually be able to say, "All right, that was my moment with loneliness. I am not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I will put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world, and I will experience them as well."
Anvesha Rana,
Grade 10-B,
Gyanshree School.
