Few things in life are more confusing than feelings. Both our own and others’. Navigating feelings is a journey that truly doesn’t end.
We learn to acknowledge and appreciate our own feelings, but not all at once. It can be hard to value your own joy when no one around you is ready to feel it, too. On the other hand, it’s easy to suppress feelings of pain or grief when your to-do list is too demanding. As we experience different parts of life, we become more able to acknowledge, understand, and ultimately express our feelings.
But that’s only half of it.
It’s another thing entirely to acknowledge and appreciate the feelings of others. Like when your partner gets overwhelmed and forgets to call the plumber. Or when you reach out to a friend for support, but their own feelings dominate the conversation. Eventually, with communication, knowledge, and compassion, we learn to set boundaries and give grace.
And even when we’re finally able to make sense of ourselves and those around us, the unexpected happens. A friend gets engaged, then left at the altar. Another friend gets pregnant, then an unexplained loss. Disease, job loss, you name it–there’s an unending amount of life that happens every single day.
But not all of it’s bad.
We can make sense of the world before our understanding shifts for more positive reasons, too! Like a promotion at work, boosting your confidence and paycheck without changing your hours. Or the kid that used to struggle with reading moves on to chapter books. These changes also trigger complex emotions.
Even this blog as I write it is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. Can you sense the tone shift with each paragraph? You may be wondering, Where are you going with this, Hannah?
Well, that’s kind of the point. I can’t land this plane. It’s a journey; a pilgrimage. Life is a journey of navigating feelings over and over again. New feelings, or old feelings in new situations. Expanded feelings. Transformed feelings.
I even hesitate to call it a rollercoaster, which implies ups and downs, highs and lows. And I’d rather not imply that “down” equals “bad” either! It’s more like a river or my dad’s golf game: side to side. Left, then right, then left again. Not up or down, because it’s not all good or bad. Not up or down, which suggests a force of gravity pulling you down to places you don’t want to go and a long, strenuous climb up back to where you want to be.
No, we would do well to picture the journey of feelings as horizontal instead of vertical. Then we would value our own and others’ feelings more. There’s no value assigned to joy or grief simply because of how they make us feel.
Thinking of the journey sideways also reminds us to not devalue the shift between the joy and the grief. It’s all part of the journey. It’s all valuable.
Which brings us to why I decided to write about it today.
In the past 12 days, I’ve attended a wedding, a baby shower, and a funeral, all for 20-something-year-olds. Talk about navigating feelings! I’ve used words in these past two weeks like “highest highs and lowest lows” though I don’t think that’s a true representation of how I feel. It’s just the easiest way to communicate what I’m feeling that will be understood by the listener. Saying “leftest lefts and rightest rights” would be too confusing.
Returning to the golf analogy, my dad jokes that he plays “army golf.” His ball responds to marching orders, going left, right, left. My ball almost always ends up in the fairway. I hit the ball straight off the tee; maybe not as far but it still looks pretty and ends up in great position for my next shot.
This is a good representation of navigating feelings. I can emotionally veer left toward joy and right toward grief. Then back to the fairway to hold them both simultaneously, preparing for the next shot.
I’m not sure what complex feelings you’re navigating today. If they’re more full of pain, confusion, optimism, or laughter. I invite you to consider the journey today. Embrace the pilgrimage. Reject the idea that only certain feelings are valuable.
And if you want to, go play golf.
