– Sophie Hwang
“One can promise actions, but not feelings, for the latter are involuntary. He who promises to love forever or hate forever or be forever faithful to someone is promising something that is not in his power.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
Emotion is a feeling such as happiness, love, fear, anger, or hatred, which can be caused by the situation you are in or the people you are with. It is formed with experience and stored in the form of memory. We may remember some emotions at the conscious level, while others are buried deeper, undetected by us. It says we are creatures of emotions. Emotions have negative and positive emotions. Negative emotions are sudden, so they sometimes make things wrong, cross the line, and eventually commit things that they will regret. Then, should negative emotions be suppressed or eliminated?
I don’t think I took good care of the negative emotions in my life. I had a compulsive obsession with being happy. I thought I shouldn’t be sad, but only delighted things should happen. I didn’t want to express my pain in front of others, and I thought the sad person was a loser. I always wanted to be seen as a bubbly and bright person and tried to suppress and deny negative emotions. These attempts appeared as depression, anger, and feeling void over time. It took me a long time to realize that negative emotions were part of my life that should not be ignored.
One of my favorite animation films named ‘Inside out’ expresses complex human emotions in five colors: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear. Riley is a happy, 11-year-old girl, but her life turns upside down when she and her family move to San Francisco. Joy leads the control panel in Riley’s emotional headquarter. Joy thinks Riley should be happy all the time. And if it were not, something is wrong. So, she believes it needs to fix. For her, Sadness is a problem to be fixed. So, Joy tries to suppress and control Sadness that acts unexpectedly. Joy draws a circle and tells Sadness to stay there. “Please be quiet and don’t do anything. “I saw myself obsessing over happiness and pushing negative emotions back through Joy, who was busy making Riley happy.
We want to control our emotions well. How can we live by controlling our emotions well?
ㅇ First of all, we have to look closely at my negative emotions. You have to face it. Don’t sweep it under the rug. Imagine putting it in a cup and covering it with a cloth. Pull them out under the sun. If not, it will get rotten and smell bad. If we try to hold onto them, we cannot move forward.
ㅇAccept negative emotions as they are no matter what was inside me. We need to embrace negative emotions as a part of my life. It is how we grow into maturity.
o We need to give me enough time to mourn it. And then, let go of everything. You will be free.
In the movie’s last scene, when the control panel is graying out, and nothing works, Sadness is the one who solves the problem. Riley goes back home, and memories of the past sublimate into positive energy with Sadness. Happy memories through pain and Sadness remember as blue colors. The joy of a state in which sadness is sublimated makes a more mature human being.
Meditation allowed me to get rid of the garbage of old emotions and shine a light on me. The meditation contains all these processes. Negative emotions come up together when I look back on life through meditation. I face a negative image of myself that has been left unattended for a long time and smells bad. I acknowledge the negative self that I don’t want to admit and let it away. Allow me time to leave the negative past repeating this process. This process is such a beautiful healing time. After repeatedly emptying in this way, I am free from negative emotions, and my consciousness gets healed. I feel like I am reborn as a more mature human being. Whether I open my eyes or close my eyes, the peace of my heart is deep and silent and profound. I am full of clear and bright energy inside. Regardless of the situation, I do not let emotions control me. So, I can manage my feelings naturally. That is how I come to control my emotion better. Thank you for your reading.???