There is a movie on Hulu called, "Aberdeen" and I watched it tonight because my Scottish ancestors came from Aberdeen and I thought it would be nice to see the land of my blood.I got more than I bargained for. Much more.
It was a bittersweet drama about a dysfunctional family and it provoked every emotion from joy to fear to anger and to tears. Generally, as soon as I feel an emotion, I'm right on top of it - managing it, rationalizing it, analyzing it and juding it. Doing whatever I can to make it go away as fast as I can.
But not tonight. Tonight, I allowed myself to experience each emotion as it came, as it was, in its time. I didn't fight it. I didn't think about it. I didn't judge it. I just flowed with it. And in flowing down the rivers of emotions, I discovered that we as humans are afraid of emotions. We are afraid that somehow, if we allow ourselves to just experience them, they will crush us, or control us. We are afraid that if others see our emotions, we will be judged or vulnerable.
But what I discovered at the end of this emotional journey is that emotions, when left to flow without resistance and without fear are just different frequencies of energy. Its when we fight them or fear them that they become unbearably intense because they remain trapped in our bodies.
As the different emotional energies coursed through my body, I sensed at my core, a space of pure peace and quietness. And I rested in this place of peace as I experienced these emotions and I saw the beautifully pure truth that an emotion is.
And I also discovered that we have our view of the world backwards. Intentionally so. The world is not cruel. The real truth, the scary truth, the truth that we hide from each other, but more so from ourselves, is that we are all very fragile. It is safer and less scary to believe that the world is cruel, rather than we are fragile.
Who among us has not been hurt? Has one soul been spared? And look how a single hurt affects us. Some, harden their hearts, so that they do not feel that pain again. Some of us become compassionate to a fault, because we know that pain. And for yet others, a single moment of pain defines them for the rest of their life. We have become so accustomed to pain that we just accept that this is how it is without seeing what it means. It means we are fragile. If we were not fragile, nothing could hurt us.
As I truly understood for the first time just how delicate and fragile we are, I also saw for the first time the incredibly awesome beauty of the human spirit and I wept. Because even though each and every one of us has experienced pain, we go on. We continue to love. We continue to strive. Even though each and every one of us is broken to a certain degree, that doesn't stop us from rising above our own brokenness to lend help, or compassion or love to another broken one.
Real strength is not feeling NO emotions, or hiding our emotions or not crying. Real strength is rising above our emotions to continue our journey or to do what is right or for the sake of another. And could that be why we've created "SuperHeroes"? Because on a certain level we know that rising above our emotions requires superhero strength.
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