It’s All Meant to Be Felt.
It’s All Meant to Be Felt.
For the sake of the feeling itself.
Since childhood, my world has been colored by intense mood swings, triggered by anything or nothing: moodiness, it seems, is an aspect of my chemistry. While I was once interested in pathologizing my emotionality, I have now come to a relative peace with it; the high highs and low lows are here to teach me. What emotionality teaches me, consistently, is that underneath the mentally manufactured drama, the core nature of each feeling is all the same. While feelings are experienced differently, they’re really all just feelings, here to be felt, that will all pass through.
This Zen Buddhist saying illustrates a way to approach the turbulent ups and downs of our emotional worlds: Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
Most obviously, perhaps, this saying can be interpreted as a reminder that no matter what, life goes on. Whether you’re flying high on excitement or falling deep into despair, life will continue: your teeth still need to be brushed; the trash will stink if you don’t take it out. Mundanity occurs in spite of, and right alongside, tragedy and celebration.
This saying also hints at a general way to practice living, in which one approaches ordinary chores and agonizing circumstances with the same “enlightened” perspective. Everything, from this perspective, is considered to be on even terrain. Offhand, this may sound careless: of course, sitting in traffic is not the same as dancing through a field of flowers, nor does death feel the same as birth. The wisdom here is regarding an underlying disposition toward everything, one that is remarkably worthy of contemplation, especially when applied to the chaotic nature of one’s emotionality.
You do not need to achieve enlightenment—you know, master your mind and live in a perpetual state of oneness—to practice living with a humble reverence for the highs and lows and neutrals of life. Anyone can intend to use each day to live with more acceptance of, and less resistance to, what is happening in each moment. Anyone can work to increase their internal sense of peace with what is, and this, in turn, makes them more of service to the world at large.
All experiences that make up our lives are simply life expressing itself differently. Sometimes you’re chopping wood, or carrying water, or falling in love, or grieving a love. Regardless of how it feels, you can approach life with openness and curiosity, and you can let yourself experience it all.
Accepting my emotional moodiness has taught me that everything that arises must be felt: not only because the more I cling to or resist it, the longer it persists, but because everything that arises is actually worth feeling, in and of itself. Disappointment can be as enriching as hope; distress can be as transformative as delight. Melancholy is as holy as excitement, and joy is as fertile as pain. Devastation and elation and growth and decay all happen together: all of it can be sacred, and all of it can be profane. All of it can teach us something.
No matter how you feel about what’s going on, life will continue. It will continue to be divine, boring, awful, and wildly beautiful, and it will continue to be worth experiencing.
May we practice feeling what’s here, for the sake of the feeling itself.
Maggie