I grew up maybe like a lot of people... with a father who didn’t show emotion and who told me to “sweep (it) under the rug” and, with a mom who wildly screamed or cried. I wonder if my parents ever paused to question whether or not this may have been the reason their marriage didn’t work and why they were so miserable. I wonder if it ever occurred to them that life could be different than that.
Yesterday as I was driving to do our monthly shopping, I was viewing the beauty around me. Suddenly I realized a woman in a car had come up driving fast behind us. It seemed that she was distressed as she attempted to zoom around us. I had my normal response of anger that was followed by pity for this woman. I wanted to stop her and ask her to remember why she had decided to move to such a beautiful place... something that she may have forgotten.
As I’ve been watching a show on Netflix lately, I do see signs that some people want to start feeling. As we get a glimpse of their lives and homes, they seem to no longer have a sense of their feelings while knowing this is no longer working for them and they want more for their lives... they want to de-clutter their lives so they can live more openly. Many seem to have tried to do what our world teaches them... find happiness through stuff or trying to deny other feelings. In the show, the organizer takes the time to greet the person’s house and asks the homeowners to organize according to what “sparks joy” in them. The organizer encourages the homeowners to stop and to feel... something foreign to almost everyone. Some have been afraid to feel for a long time while others never knew this option ever existed. What most don’t realize is that not only are they discovering what joy feels like, but also what other emotions feel like. To know joy, we must also know something else. It seems so easy and small, but this change is huge. When the show is over, the light in the homeowners faces is back... all from feeling joy and beyond joy.
When we moved into our new home, I promised myself that I wouldn’t allow anything or anyone into my home that didn’t have meaning and didn’t bring me inspiration. Through watching the example of this show, I am now with more purpose stopping to feel whether a person or item inspires me before I invite it in. To know inspiration, I must also know other emotions too.
Some in our world continue to teach only happiness as good, right, or enlightenment, but too often the way this is taught is through shame and dissociation. To know happiness, joy, or inspiration, it seems that we must also know what doesn’t feel like happiness, joy, or inspiration. Perhaps we must also know what other emotions and feelings are gifted and available to us.
Perhaps happiness, joy, or inspiration can only be known, valued, or treasured when we know how to experience all that life offers us.
—Lisa Pratt, February 2021
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