Allowing Emotions to Communicate Truth

(Written March 1, 2007)

For whatever reason, emotions often seem to be the most difficult things to communicate; both to others and especially to ourselves. This is not true for everyone, however, because I've known people who seem to have no problem whatsoever with communicating exactly how they feel. In a lot of ways, I really admire that. But for the rest of us, it's a bit more difficult. That's interesting because, to me, it seems that our emotions are at the very core of who and what we are. With that in mind, it should be fairly easy to express them, right? Well, apparently not.

Some emotions are easier to communicate than others, like happiness, for example. It's easy to say that we're happy--at least for the moment--by smiling or laughing. Sadness seems to be a little harder, but still quite simple. Of course, there are many layers to happiness and sadness; I don't think it's ever black and white. It's with these layers together with things like anger, frustration, fear, confusion, and love, that we start running into difficulty.

More than communicating to others, it is difficult for us to accept the emotions that we're experiencing inside. Sometimes when we feel happy, we make the fundamentally wrong decision of telling ourselves the lie that we don't deserve to be happy. We essentially deny ourselves the privilege and blessing of experiencing happiness. It seems to me that we should try our best to accept and acknowledge each and every emotion that we experience; including the so-called negative ones. I actually don't think that there's such a thing as a negative emotion. We feel things like hate, anger, sadness, etc. for a reason. I believe it would be a healthy thing to accept these feelings, if nothing else, to try and make steps to overcome them. We can not combat something that we don't believe is there. Beyond that--almost without exception--emotions are always indicative of something that is actually happening. Knowing that, I believe, will make it easier for us to at least begin to overcome some emotional trials that we all go through.

Love, I think, is probably one of the most difficult emotions to accept and act on. Why is it so hard for us to fall in love? Is it as simple as fear of rejection, or is there more to it than that? I really don't know. But for many people, falling in love is a little bit like going down a one-way road: it's never returned. I can see how that would be a deterrent that would keep us from allowing ourselves to fall in love, just to be hurt again. But I also think that severely limits us. I think one of life's greatest tragedies is when we don't allow ourselves to fall in love simply because of self-denial.

In the end, I believe that our emotions are gifts from God that act as lights to guide us through this life, and to lead us to truth. To deny them is to deny wisdom.