Posts tagged with "emotion"

The Next Level

I used to seethe, stew, and mar­i­nate. If I was in a bad mood, I want­ed to stay in a bad mood because, some­how, I would want to make it worth it. I fig­ure that if some­thing is bad enough to make me sour, I should­n’t be eas­i­ly tak­en out of that frame of mind. It’s the same with for­give­ness. I’m slow to anger, but once I’m there, I’m extreme­ly slow to for­give, for the exact same rea­son.

For years, I would lis­ten to music to help me wal­low in these emo­tions. It would cra­dle me, fuel me until the emo­tion burned out. Listening this way, with a surge of sen­ti­ment, would let me feel the notes, and I would savour every sec­ond, minute, and even­tu­al hour of it.

Lately, though, I hear music dif­fer­ent­ly. It inspires me. It moves me. It helps me out of an emo­tion, instead of into one. And it feels like this change is a reflec­tion of how much my life is chang­ing now, how I’m begin­ning to see the entire world around me in such a pro­found­ly dif­fer­ent way.

As if every­thing that’s past is pro­logue to this.

Has It Come?

Tonight I ordered the escar­got, while Tinsley Ellis, a man who seemed to have a cer­tain uncom­plex wis­dom beyond his years, sang his ver­sion of the south Florida blues. I admit that I was skep­ti­cal at first, but was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by the time his first num­ber had end­ed, an instru­men­tal piece that one could tell was writ­ten as more than a sim­ple intro­duc­to­ry song.

And while he sang his words with a com­bi­na­tion of gruff sin­cer­i­ty and sto­ic con­fi­dence, I sat there. Wondering why sad music can’t make me sad right now. Feeling some­thing I had nev­er felt before.

Lost in a moment of clar­i­ty.

Self-Restraint: Tensility

Some peo­ple turn to pills and things
To help them through the day
To take them up or down or just
To ease the blues away
But me I real­ly want to feel
The ups and downs of life so real
Happy or sad emo­tions reign
My tears flow just the same

—Lamb, I Cry

I had been try­ing to write this for near­ly a month, but could­n’t get it down until I real­ly lis­tened to the lyrics of I Cry on the walk home past the pow­er lines. I decid­ed to split this up into two sep­a­rate entries, after real­iz­ing that I have two sim­i­lar ideas in my head, but two very dis­tinct issues. Perhaps it just took a few extra rough days of work to force me to think about this. All the things falling apart that I have to fix, respon­si­bil­i­ties, dead­lines, and tons of oth­er mis­cel­la­neous things are def­i­nite­ly mak­ing me think of ways to get the ten­sion out of my arms and shoul­ders.

Sometimes, when I come home, all I want to do is get piss drunk or mind­less­ly stoned. Maybe go reck­less­ly buy a bunch of things I don’t need, to make myself feel bet­ter for that lit­tle amount of time. Sometimes I just feel like doing some­thing irra­tional, even though I have no idea what or why, sim­ply because I believe it would get my mind of things. And yet I don’t do any of this, espe­cial­ly when I’m hav­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly bad day, because I don’t want to be depen­dent on any­thing.

I don’t want to rely on nar­cotics, or mate­r­i­al goods, or self-muti­la­tion, or any­thing at all to make myself feel bet­ter. I want to be sure that I can han­dle things, no mat­ter what, on my own. I force myself to feel every stress­ful, mis­er­able, for­lorn emo­tion, so that I know that I can get through them.

Sometimes, every day can be a test. Music and writ­ing are the only things that I allow myself.

And some­times I have to tell myself that it’s enough.

Stew

It’s rare that some­thing will make me feel for­lorn nowa­days, but every so often, some­thing will set me off. I love to stew in those emo­tions, to appre­ci­ate them when I do feel them. Some songs sound total­ly dif­fer­ent, like Battlecry by Grace Like Winter, but there’s noth­ing like hear­ing the open­ing bars of Oddity by Coal Chamber. A song that makes the skin feel like it’s peel­ing off, that must be loud enough to burn the tym­pan­ic mem­brane. It’s like the body melts, and every­thing fus­es togeth­er.

Eventually, every­thing goes away.

The Zarathustra Sessions, Part 3: Saint Salieri

I know the hatred and envy of your hearts. You are not great enough to not know hatred and envy. So be great enough not to be ashamed of them!

—Of War and Warriors, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Ah, back into this again. I was­n’t plan­ning on writ­ing this tonight, but some­thing set me off.

I like how Nietzsche believes that two human “flaws”, which some view as sins no less, should be embraced instead of shunned. Most like­ly, he’s attack­ing Christianity, and it’s view of hatred and envy as sins (he goes on to attack oth­er beliefs in sweep­ing sub­ject dances). Personally, I think that he’s point­ing out the fact that humans are, in fact, human, and prone to err. After all, who is good enough to not feel such base emo­tions, even if only once-in-a-while?

It’s made me real­ize that some­times I should­n’t be so hard on myself. I should­n’t blame myself for feel­ing a cer­tain way, or hav­ing a cer­tain flaw. It does­n’t even mat­ter if painful emo­tions don’t gen­er­ate some­thing ben­e­fi­cial, like self-improve­ment.

Of course, if my base assump­tion is wrong, then I’m read­ing too deeply into this. Such things are always a haz­ard of read­ing trans­lat­ed mate­r­i­al, and all that real­ly mat­ters is whether or not it helps.

It’s tak­en me this long to real­ize that the best that one can do is try, not suc­ceed. That does­n’t mean that I’m going to set­tle for a life with­out self-improve­ment, it just means that I should learn to for­give myself before I learn to for­give oth­ers.

Because the for­mer has always been hard­er than the lat­ter.