‘Why Is That?’ – Curiosity of Feeling

Why is there sadness? Why is there happiness? We feel along the spectrum of these emotions—the million between, or so—as well as a myriad of different emotions. We feel. Why do we feel?

These are all important questions. When we explore further the meaning behind our emotions we can find a great deal of complementary meaning in life. Life makes more sense.

For instance, there’s a pocket of knowledge beyond the physicality of feeling—where bodily nerves play their role. It’s just that we’ve been cut off from this knowledge because of our fear. We all struggle with fear, much of which is fathoms deeper than the fear we even feel. Deep below is found a mystery. But to some intents of purpose we can redeem this meaning if we’re open to it. There’s very little to actually fear.

Enquiring Of The Encroaching Emotion

Not all emotions are negative, and this practice, below, may be practised on the more positive emotions, even bringing them to a halcyon joy.

When we ask, at the encroaching emotion, in the moment of feeling, ‘Why is that?’ we:

1. Halt the negative manifestation of the emotion (e.g. anger, pride, etc), and

2. We begin learning about ourselves because our inner curiosity sees beyond our sense of guilt, shame, etc.

In positive emotions both these above steps increase our joy because we interpret the emotion as cathartic and we just sit with it; enjoying it. We allow all the joy that can be extracted to prevail over us. We learn about our responses to such joy; like how good it feels and how we want to bless others’ lives in the process.

The encroaching emotion is, hence, something we can reflect upon within the moment. The positive emotions reap more joy by this practice, and the negative emotions halted and learned from quell the consequences of these feelings. More happiness and less regret results.

The Employment Of The Higher Mind

What we’re doing in asking a simple question—‘Why is that?’—is employing the higher mind. Everyone is capable of this level of more discerned, considered thinking. All we must do is slow our reaction time; to act only after an adequate sense of self-enquiry has been entered into—one that simultaneously weighs the pros and cons of various lines of action.

The higher mind will help us by facilitating better thinking if we’ll allow it. This, itself, is a learning journey. Merely stopping to ask ‘Why is that?’ is enough to engage the higher mind. It’s a healthy distraction from the risky immediacy of our emotions; responses which, in the main, we can’t help.

***

Curiosity of feeling is exploring why we feel the way we feel when we feel. None of our feelings are bad; but perhaps we’ve been taught they’re bad. This is wrong and should be corrected. We feel feelings for important reasons. Exploring the reasons is a big part of what life’s all about. Exploring feelings opens the way to freedom.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Graphic Credit: Joe Lapiana.

What Do I Have? And, Is It Enough?

Times in life come, be they seconds, hours or seasons, where we really do question what we have and whether it’s enough. This is about what we have within us, emotionally and spiritually, in order to cope. We may have an abundance of ‘stuff’, yet very little in the way of the moment’s confidence to carry out and support life.

At critical times of honesty—times of identity crisis—we ask these very question of ourselves: What do I really have? And, is it enough?

These are fair questions. So, let’s look at them.

What Do We Really Have?

Asking myself then, what do I have?

I have:

Air to breathe, with lungs and the impulse for respiration which is enough, for now, to keep me alive; a conscious awareness to differentiate pleasure from pain; the ability to hope; people in my life, some that love me; the love and acceptance of God; faith in God; physical possessions that act as tools for life; the inspiration and motivation for work; the ability to hunt and gather; the enjoyment of food and drink; senses with which to perceive my world; relative freedom in my vocational setting; a mind to wonder with and a heart to dream; been blessed with many experiences—some happy, some sad, and so many between; both my rational thought and my playful being; the ability to become anything at any time; some quiet moments to reflect; feelings with which to feel; the ability and the motive to admire; knowledge of my sin which motivates me to draw close to God; my owned fallibility; all I can see even if I don’t own it...

There are so many things that I have...

... so many things that a few minutes’ reflection redeems infinity, at least in my small mind.

Knowing, With Confidence, We Have Enough

Living life with fortitude may be, of a sense, simply knowing we have enough; that all we have, as provided us in the essence of our living, is enough.

We’re so often thwarted by beguiling mischiefs of thought that satisfy themselves only in despairing us. They set themselves upon rendering our lives meaningless, for they have us focusing on everything we don’t have.

Why do we focus on the few things we don’t have rather than on the many things we do? We may be apt to reverse the order; many things we want and few that we have. This is a distortion.

We do have enough; to endure our days; to survive, yet even thrive. Counting up our blessings is heaping up upon our consciousness the gorgeousness of life.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Targeting the Connection Zone

There are occasions, with the need of connection prominent, where we take the opportunity, and for a moment we connect. Using such a space, recently with my 13-year-old daughter, I suggested we go to ‘the connection zone’, to sit in the ‘connection chair’. It was said in jest, but it proved a point in retrospect: the nexus of life is found in this connection zone.

What is the connection zone? It’s any location between two individuals, and within them as persons, of shared ground. It’s where two people can be themselves in the company of another; lost in their authenticity, where barriers to trust are non-existent. We put on no dishonesty in these situations—there’s no pretence.

This is certainly a zone most of us pine for, especially in the family setting.

Counselling Our Children

As parents we have a role in counselling our children, which is not about telling them what to do, but listening to them—to their inner needs of soul. Such counselling can only be achieved from, or in, the connection zone.

The greatest indicator that such a zone has been created is the fact that two persons—a parent and a child, in this case—might become lost within the moment to be truly themselves with no barriers to disclosure. The achievement of this zone occurs more casually than we recognise. Try too hard and the zone becomes impossible. Pry too much and the antenna of suspicion is raised.

This is where we may be confused; the role of parental counselling. It’s almost nothing about advice, yet almost everything about warmth, empathy and genuineness. This can be a hard thing to learn when we’ve been most apt to issue advice—where that advice has been needed. Certainly as kids get older, especially in the teen years, there’s far less need for advice and so much more need for warmth, empathy and genuineness in simply listening and ‘journeying with’.

Nothing is beyond the realm of understanding when we reach such a zone between two people of like mind. As minds and hearts enjoin, a meeting ensues, perhaps lasting mere minutes. It’s all that’s required. A bond has formed and it can be developed.

***

Targeting the connection zone is meeting another person, perhaps one of our children, and with warmth, empathy and genuineness we find ourselves trying their shoes, feeling with their hands, and seeing with their eyes; gaining a grasp for their lives. From the connection zone we achieve an authenticity so often missing in relationships we want to be close with. In this zone we’re completely ourselves with another.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Pretenders Need Not Apply

The article is about listening. The premise is this: why would we divulge our true thoughts and feelings to someone who isn’t interested enough to listen properly—who isn’t interested? Perhaps they’re more interested in telling us about themselves; so many are those. For these people we listen to them intently, but give them a ‘safe’ sanitised version of ourselves.

Many of our social situations, whether within family or at work or elsewhere, feature people we interact with who are less interested than they could be. This is a fact of life. We know, ourselves, there are many blockers to listening effectively. Many times we’re just not interested.

It’s the lack of interest that concerns us most.

There is another very good reason not to divulge too much with those not listening well enough. The answers we give to half-interested questions are less than the truth, because we sense the other party isn’t interested enough. There’s not enough authenticity created inviting us to open up. The difference is, when we have opened up to uninterested people, as we reflect later, we may feel we haven’t done justice to ourselves; that the half-truths we told were somehow a denial or a fabrication. And why would we want to deny or fabricate? No, we just trusted when it wasn’t safe to trust.

It’s better by far to choose, beforehand, what this person before us should need to hear.

Only Listeners Get Our Fuller Disclosures

The heading is the principle. Only those who can demonstrate an active commitment to listening to us deserve to receive the full us. Likewise, we can only expect people to be completely truthful and open with us when we demonstrate our care for them by being interested enough to listen intently.

This is an effective rule because issues important enough—on both sides—get sufficient attention.

There’s an important dignity involved in this principle, too. We remain in control of what we give out about ourselves. Pretenders need not apply for our trust and authenticity because they haven’t first proved they are interested enough to listen. We shouldn’t feel compelled to betray ourselves.

In a self-reflective moment we understand the importance of listening: we, too, should endeavour never to be a pretender; to be genuinely interested enough to listen, especially after we’ve asked questions. We should be interested enough to listen to the answers given.

***

To feel that we’ve been listened to is a privileged, yet relatively rare, state of being. We’re right to protect ourselves before people who aren’t interested enough to listen properly. Our trust and authenticity belong to those who demonstrate real interest. As far as true openness is concerned, pretenders need not apply.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Content Through Our Ages

As we stand at a distance to ourselves, reflecting over life, the world, and the universe, and about how it all works, we come back, ultimately, to ourselves. The idea of life, as it’s personally lived, is living content through the ages... turning each page, through each stage of one life—us, in our intrinsic oneness.

***

Throughout these days,

As we turn each page,

Lost in the maze,

Within each complicated stage.

Being malcontent,

Despite hopes beyond,

We wish to relent,

For that which we’ve longed.

Asking heavenward and high,

Even down below,

Wondering if it’s nigh,

Or an extended show.

Life’s a whizz and a crack,

A dishevelled mess,

When we’ve missed the knack,

Behoves us to confess.

All said and done,

Comes to us now,

No point to run,

Success we now endow.

***

How might we look at life from the longer term perspective? I’d venture to say that frequently pondering such a thought can only enlighten our lives to the perspectives of God. This is the aspect of this poem, above.

As we turn each of the pages throughout our days, each stage, within itself, is complicated, messy, and difficult to comprehend. Only later, with the distance of the emotions set at rest, does the hidden idea of reality make itself exposed; and that, for our accomplished benefit.

Merging Middle Grounds

We get stuck in the middle ground much through our lives. We’re malcontents. We have our wishes, and these desires of the heart we struggle with; we desire them, yet wish to relinquish them. This desire to relent comes because desire is often too hard.

Another middle ground is the length of our moments, of seasons, even the entirety of our lives. Do they perish in immediacy, or do they endure? What can we expect? How will things turn out? These are all mysteries yet to be worked out in the minds of us, but not by the plan of God. All is known within the Divine.

Merging the middle grounds is the job of us humans. There, is peace. There, is meaning.

***

Life is an oft-confusing state of existence. Our minds are tossed to and fro as we contend with multiple perspectives, growing toward chaos. Our mission is to amalgamate the stimuli, bringing proper order to the pandemonium. Such a life is centred and continually re-centred and Shalom exists between.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Depressive Emotions and Spirituality

Beyond going to our doctor, and within a most desperate circumstance, we may feel abandoned for an answer to the way we feel. Surely it’s depression or, as a therapist I once knew would say, an episode of life leading to depressive symptoms (for instance, grief).

Notwithstanding the benefit of a good anti-depressant medication, there are things we can do, emotionally and spiritually, to address or suppress depressive symptoms, in order to feel comforted or better. This is the important thing: to feel we have some control over our day; even if that control is minuscule, but meaningful.

Dealing With Our Emotional ‘Stuff’

There’s no one on the face of the planet that doesn’t have emotional stuff to deal with. We may feel isolated, from time to time, by the fact of the lostness within us. It’s not only the past, but how we deal with the present, and our anxiety for the future.

At some point we might begin to know that we have this moment. Whether it’s relatively sad or happy isn’t the point; as human beings we’ll vacillate between varying levels of sadness and happiness. What’s important is a sense of happiness relative to ourselves. We deserve to be happy. And, it’s worth striving for.

Dealing with our emotional stuff is coming to terms with truths about us, whilst accepting what’s occurred, what is, and what will be. Whilst, these are no short missions, they’re no less vital. When we can enjoy the process of getting healthier emotionally we’re getting close to the happiness we can ultimately depend on, as joy—despite our circumstances.

Fighting The Spiritual Nemesis

There’s a name for this nemesis—the father of lies, Satan.

Many spiritual ills are due the attack of the prince of darkness. Prayer, in the name of Jesus, is that which helps, because the Spirit of the Lord has already overcome this arch-nemesis of God. As we pray, we ‘inflict’ upon our souls the instant confidence—knowledge, no less—that the fight has already been one. We remind ourselves as many times as we need to.

We’re reminding ourselves it’s not our fight, but God’s, and though our Lord has vanquished the power of darkness, he will again inflict Divine savagery, just for us, just for now, just because we’re loved.

The church fellowship we belong to, also, has a role in interceding for us. We gather about us two or three souls we trust, especially intercessors so gifted. We ask them to pray. We ask them to be spiritually discerning for when God brings us to their mind, for God will do that. Our burdens are shared when we have the might of a small army of intercessors working, through God, for us.

***

Beyond medication, depressive episodes can be alleviated as we attend to our emotions and spirituality. Knowing that, in God, we’re good people, worthy of a good life, and that God has already won the battle over our darkness can help. As we work hard at resting ourselves and receiving the support we need we can begin to feel better, one day and moment at a time.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Building the Bridge Over Ourselves

Sometimes the best vision for our interaction with our world comes via the need within us to remove ourselves as a barrier to relational equations. We must, at times, build the bridge over ourselves in order to get along in our world. This is humbling. We don’t readily accept that we might be the problem, but, just as others can be the problem, too, we’re destined to have our turn.

When these times occur, the quicker and more effective we are at righting ourselves the better for everyone.

This is not to be down on ourselves; we just need to be honest. Everyone has times where pride precipitates their fall.

There’s No Shame In Being Wrong

Despite our pride, which is the will to protect ourselves against embarrassment, exposure, or malice, etc, where the ego is tested, our right mind will advise us that humility is the way. There’s no shame in being wrong, or in even being caught out of position to defend ourselves when we’re right, though the instinct is to protect.

Being seen as being wrong, whether we’re wrong or not, is a test of our humility. Humility says, ‘How important is it?’ It remains to be convinced that fighting a minuscule cause—that of our own for our sake alone—is worthy. It’s not.

It never works out to our advantage, in the long run, when we fight for our cause—unless it’s some sort of legal battle where true justice is at play. The world’s justice makes us a laughingstock when we consume effort and emotion for personal gain regarding our protection.

Building One Bridge Facilitates The Building Of Others

Whenever we get ourselves right, building the bridge over ourselves and our pride, there stands before us a way to build bridges in our relationships. Our whole world looks different when we resign the motive to fight a losing battle. As we loosen the grip of our pride over us, new perspective comes flooding in. We notice others in and about our lives and bridges toward peace in our relationships are under construction.

The less serious we are about our cause the more perspective we’ll gain. The less concerned we are about our needs being filled, the more likelihood we’ll be satisfied.

These facts are so overwhelming in their truth they work basically every time. The less we want the more we feel like we’re getting.

***

We’re our biggest barriers at times. When we get out of our way, shelving our pride in humility, our relationships blossom, and people see the glory of God.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Hearts Go Out in Love

This is about a sad story; of loneliness—because of love; a familial love—not romantic, nor laced in any complication beyond family. Yet, family is complicated enough. Not that it wants or needs to be...

The Shallow And Deep Complexities Of Family

Family is that thing we can’t live with and we can’t live without.

Let me explain.

Our families exist for support, yet much of the support we require cannot come from our families. Others, like our friends, or us alone, or a trusted ‘counsellor’, must be the navigators assisting us through the low tides of life. Still, there are times when family are the only ones that can help.

Then again, family are much too close to affect much of a sense of objectivity. Still further, there’s always a place for subjectivity in wrangling with loneliness and personal despair. A hug, or to be held, requires no regimen or structure. A silent, unspeakable presence knows no bounds of need.

Further convoluting an already horribly complex dynamic is when we sense loneliness within a family member, and we reach out, discovering how useless our help is. As a reflection, that’s humbling. It’s the phenomenon known commonly, yet uniquely, within family. Family members know our heart is situated right, yet we rarely know what to do, or the right things to say, to help. They know, ironically, as we get it wrong, we’re only trying to help.

Our hearts go out in love—they must. But our love may have little practical effect, despite mutual wills for the joining of such love: their loneliness and our reaching out, or vice versa.

Disassembling And Reassembling A Fact – Love

The facts of our hearts are irrepressible. When it comes to family we cannot help but love. However misdirected our love seems to be, it’s still love. Though it’s not enough in the moment, it was always enough as we look back. There, that’s comfort.

Our sense of felt uselessness within our moments of trying to help is the mere recognition of love; soft, gooey, subjective love. As we’re disassembled by love in that felt uselessness, love also, simultaneously, somehow, reassembles us—complete and whole we become in our imperfection.

What’s reinforced is the total acceptance required that our practical love has limits. When we arrange our thoughts this way, accepting our flawed best without guilt, we issue our love in a less useless way—or at least we feel less useless.

As we’ve discussed, family is essential in reinforcing our handicapped sense for loving people according to their need. We try and we fail, but our efforts are appreciated. And though our love is fractured our motives are never better placed. This is a thing families should cling to. Where is this love coming from? Not, what is it trying to do? But, where is it coming from?

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Life After Family Hurts

The premise to begin with is the typical family dust-up, whether one-to-one or communal... This article does not cover issues of family hurt in the criminal sense.

A GOOD PLACE to learn compassion and grace is within family—there, apart from our workplaces, we’ll never be more tested regarding our patience, tolerance and familial resilience. And even though love wins comprehensively in the matter of family relationships, generally, there are always times when family will hurt each other.

Successful families are not those that get love right every time, but they do strive to understand and forgive one another for transgressions made—with allowance made for personal styles of non-textbook apology and forgiveness.

Getting family right, hence, is a choice, as loving someone, even after we’ve been hurt, is a choice.

‘Trust, Even After What They’ve Done?’

Most people will think that trusting someone who’s hurt us is fraught with danger.

It’s only fraught with danger when we continue to trust, and that trust is continually thwarted toward abuse. Most times we trust again, having been hurt, and the person that hurt us is surprised and relieved by our genial grace and they are never friendlier, especially a family member who may not have wanted to hurt us in the first place.

Many people get angry, losing control, despite themselves—especially in family affairs. Such a loss of control can prove utterly embarrassing. There’s a significant portion of shame to be dealt with. Most people will want to deny these feelings.

When the person we’ve hurt responds later in a forgiving way, we notice their grace and we appreciate it. More intimacy is built on the foundation, and an apology may soon surface within us. Their grace didn’t communicate to us that they were a pushover; no, it communicated to us their kindly, patient strength—that our relationship meant more to them than their selfishness to pull away and hold resentment.

If we can, likewise, we extend our benefit of the doubt as we try and understand things from another person’s point of view.

Love’s Test

Love is easy when there’s no conflict. Love’s test, then, is to choose to love, by our trust and effort for openness, having been hurt. Upon such an action we experience a blessing from God: we kept a family dynamic together that was exposed for significant damage. This is no insignificant thing. Disregarding how our act for trust is received, God is pleased with our faith.

Such effort for openness, when we’d be excused to draw away, is not, again, the exemplification of a pushover, but the characterisation of a courageous leader within the family. It’s not negating what they’ve done to us; it’s merely issuing a second chance. And in the issuing of grace we demonstrate we’re the strong ones; the strong should assist the weak—disregarding age and status in the family.

***

Trusting those family members again who’ve hurt us is the grace of love underpinned by strength. When it’s far easier to withhold forgiveness, our choice to love is the most powerful sign that our love is real.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Love the Best Way They Knew

Many will, and do, hurt because of estranged family arrangements—even in cases where loved ones have long departed, from the relationship or in body. This unkempt sense of self, because we ran short on all the transactions of love necessary to grow in well-adjusted ways, can be reconciled in the knowledge that, they loved us the best way they knew how.

Nearly everyone that fails miserably in the art of loving their kin had no reasonable model, and no way of knowing how to love; unless they were blessed by the will to love (and not everyone is). Most people will return like for like; a natural justice. If they were not loved, rejected in significant ways, they may choose or inadvertently reject in similar ways.

What we can appreciate is the simple nature of cause-and-effect.

Honouring The Law Of Life

Cause-and-effect (a natural justice) is a naturally occurring phenomenon of this world. We tend to reap what we sow, but this is obviously not a science; it happens more randomly than we expect, especially in relationships.

When it comes to those kin relationships we were hurt by, those that continue to dog us now, there was a cause-and-effect reason why we were treated the way we were (they loved us only as they knew how), and there is a cause-and-effect tendency shaping our future too. Our love has been, in many ways, shaped by the love we’ve experienced.

This may have motivated us to love better or differently, but we’re reminded of the power of cause-and-effect. The power of this cycle may be broken in our generation, but only when we frequently and wholeheartedly own the truth of this realisation of our pain and history of lack, because it’s become our pattern, too.

A New Model For Love

In an effort to break what might be deemed some sort of generational curse, we begin to explore what love might really be in the context of family relationships.

Holding two realities in the air—metaphorically, one in each of our hands—we can work on accepting the broken model of love we may have been brought up by, for what it was, whilst we also muse upon the perfect love of God—a new model.

On the one hand we sympathise with those who used broken models. They knew, due their own experience, no better way. We allow our hearts to feel for them.

On the other hand we consider this love of God’s—perfection in its entirety; an abundance of acceptance; and annihilation of rejection. We’re ever safe in this love.

The brand-new model of love we create, in the name of a loving God, is borne in sympathy for those who knew not how to love, and it’s sponsored by the completeness of grace. This love of God’s knows no bounds. With it we love our loved ones without threat of rejection, and to the consummation of acceptance.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.