Fourth Form of Madness

So I am travelling at the moment.  At present I am sitting in an airport lounge watching the world around me.  Travel often involves many periods of waiting and I always find these some of my favourite times to sit back and observe.  I remember when I was in my final year of high school and the career guidance officer asked me what I wanted to do with my life.  I replied “I want to people watch and learn from their patterned interactions and behaviours”.  He said there was no such job and said perhaps I would prefer teaching.  I found out years later I should have gone to a different guidance counsellor.  I also found out sociology filled my original 17 year old desire to people watch quite nicely.

On the surface, we all look so different.  We speak different languages, hold different beliefs and values, grow up in different countries with different cultural and moral preferences.  But internally, we share a very similar landscape.  We feel emotions.  We will all at one point feel joy and love,  we will all at one point feel sorrow and grief.  We can’t be sure they will be of the same measure or for the same reasons.  But we all share this common language of emotion and we are all joined by this common experience.

We know if we suffer a loss, we will grieve.  We know we will feel fear if we push beyond our comforts zones and we know the sheer exhilaration and happiness we will experience should we let ourselves step beyond where we imaged we could. We may not have the exact same life experiences but we will, by the end of our lives, have shared most, if not all, of the major emotions that this life brings.  This is our common experience, these are the links in the chain that entwine us all in this bundle of humanity.

These emotions are gifts.  They are all chances to step closer to life and feel the beauty contained in every atom, in every particle of this existence.   They are all a window into living, of being human.  And in their way, they are all chances to understand yourself, and others better.  They can sometimes in their extreme states render new ways of seeing the mundane and every day.  Who hasn’t felt the raw beauty of living after experiencing a loss of a loved one.  Who hasn’t felt the world become so heart breaking beautiful after deep period of sadness?

Perhaps one of the most valuable jewels that emotions bestows on us is the ability to be empathetic.  I believe there is a link between being able to sit with your emotions and be willing to see them through with honest, brave, open eyes and a heart, that teases out of us an ability to be empathic to others.  Even if I can not understand the logic that you have used to arrive at your position in life, belief or value or whatever it is, I can understand the emotions you might be feelings as you travel through life and it is this emotional understanding and commonality that can allow a deep empathetic response.  And why wouldn’t we want to encourage this beautiful, life embellishing empathetic link when at the end of it’s rainbow, is the real pot of gold, the real jewel.  Compassion.  Indeed a beautiful shimmering beauty that is all our birthrights.

So next time when confronted with an emotional response in your being.  Sit with it.  Invite it to stay with you for a while.  Treat it like a good friend who is about to whisper to you some very wise words of wisdom.  Lend it your ear and let it fore fill it’s duty of linking you to all the beauty this life has to offer.