It's Just Emotion Taking Me Over

I’ve been pondering how one stays in touch with one’s emotions from a place of honesty. Then I realized that the concept was oxymoronic. Emotions, if left alone, are honest. The emotions themselves are a direct manifestation of what one feels. It is our use of words, euphemisms, restraint, exaggeration, silence and noise that distorts the honesty of our emotions. This is not wrong, in my opinion. Exercising one’s capacity to use discretion is part of the human experience.

Or maybe I've got it all wrong. Maybe that notion of wearing your emotions on your sleeve is not so bad. Maybe unleashed expression is the new bravery, for those of us that have gotten cozy with restraint, for those of us who are artists, for those of us paving our own road to follow…for those of us who long to love more deeply, who long to hate more passionately.

There is something fascinating and intriguing about watching a person who lets it all hang out and has little or no use for temperance or diplomacy. It is even more captivating to encounter a person like this who is both unapologetic and rather secure in her/himself. It is fascinating because it is not me, or like me. Unlike me, this person treats her/his emotions with the utmost importance in the moment – without thinking about it, or others, first. Isn’t there something so seductive about being an emotional open book? You give your most raw performance and the expression just flows out of you, not over calculated or under delivered. As a person on the receiving end, you experience this outbreak of honesty unfiltered – like raw honey…

…Or raw sewage. That’s the thing. It can be great, or it can be ugly. Every opportunity, every expression can go one of two ways. You can love what you just saw or heard, or loathe it. You can justify what you just said or did, or apologize for it. You can be mesmerized or nauseated. You can be fierce or a hot mess.

Perhaps that is the best advantage to unfettered emotion: you have options.