Emotions

I've always been pretty extraordinarily terrible at processing how I feel, or really even allowing myself to feel the way that I do. As a matter of pride and as a matter of personality, I tend to keep a rational exterior, even when there's a storm brewing underneath. When I am upset, it often comes out as an angry outburst or tirade that is easy to brush off later.

So I've been trying to be more aware of my emotional experience of life lately. I'm trying to accept my emotions as a legitimate way to experience the world. I still try to stuff them through the rational lens a lot of the time, but I'm at least not allowing my rational side to decide I'm ridiculous for feeling the way that I do. So often I have felt something deep and real and then decided I was overreacting and ignored it. Or I have failed to recognize a nagging ache until it becomes a major crisis. But if I stop and listen to myself, the emotional me is actually really smart, quite often smarter than the rational me. I need to take time to be silent and rest, and it's amazing what truth can surface when I do that.

Sacred Space

What's on my mind now is something I rarely talk about anymore, because it's so complicated for me: faith. Faith is something I really struggle with, because I am a consummate skeptic. I'm also generally very empirical, a self-described "information sponge" who is always scanning the world around me for truth. But I also believe that there is as much a source of truth within us as there is in the world around us, perhaps even more if you think of the created environment that humans have made largely as an expression of the various inner worlds of people. I think that for the past few years I've been gradually suppressing and neglecting the inner sense of truth that I used to experience so deeply and vividly. And at the same time, I've gotten farther and farther from an "organized" religious practice. I'm uncomfortable with prescriptions of the right way to be and feel and act, because I have seen so many lovely ways of being and feeling and acting that seem to have never been accounted for properly in any institution or system of organized thought.

That's all rather abstract, I know. But it's on my mind because it's Lent, and at the same time it's a tough and uncertain time in my life in pretty much every arena (work, relationships, inner life). I decided yesterday that I need to spend part of each day quiet, to calm the constant info processing that I tend to do. In the course of trying to find something to feed my meditative time, I rediscovered Sacred Space, a contemplative prayer and study guide that a Jesuit group in Ireland publishes (http://sacredspace.ie/). It reminds me of how much I love these Irish Jesuits -- for the contemplative approach that guides a person to be receptive and open, to ask for meaning rather than prescribing meaning, and to allow an honest emotional response to God and scripture. This is the only approach to faith that has ever rung true to me, and it's funny because it's so hard for me to practice: "shut up, relax, listen".

Passion

It's a bit difficult to get started on a new blog entry when it's been so long since my last one and there's been more than ever processing through my mind, so much that I'm grappling with. How to pick something to talk about?

For now, I'm not going to get too detailed, but one of the things I'm learning right now is the importance of passion. I've made almost all of my decisions up to now based on a rational assessment of what I should do -- what's most practical, most reasonable, does the most to help others, does the most to please others. And in the process, I've suppressed the part of me that lights up when I see something that captivates me. I think everyone must have at least one thing that does this to them -- for me, it's books, music, art. Words and patterns. Creative articulation. I don't think I'm ever much happier than when I'm a room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. I feel calm and centered, but also invigorated.

I think I've underestimated the need for passion to drive me, and I doubt I'm the only person who's done this. It's tempting to keep what I have now, what I'm sure of, rather than to try for something better and more beautiful and risk losing what I have. Especially if all the voices, including the one in my own head, exhort me to exercise caution.

It's also hard to change when you don't like what you have, but you also don't hate it, and there is nothing really forcing you to make a move. Inertia is incredibly powerful. But that means that a first step, an initial push, can also continue to produce motion.

What does it take to be happy? I'm trying to learn more of the answer to this question. I think it starts with self awareness, recognizing what it is I love most and realizing what that means about who I am. It also includes choosing continually to do what makes me happy, both in the current moment I'm living and in whatever situation the future may bring. And I think it is also something that is fed by witnessing the passion and happiness of other people, wherever they might find it.