Our Emotional Future, Part 1

L' isle sur-la-Sorgue

Like a lot of us, I have had to limit my watching the news. I’m probably down to watching our beloved Rachel to about once a week, where at my house, we attempt to make an evening of it and have a bit of salon a la (for those of you who remember her) Molly Ivins.  I make the usual Maggyritas and we remain stealth. Yet, the chaos and anxiety producing state of our world is thrown at us at an epic force, albeit a powerful, assaultive ADHD force that encourages insomnia and incites anger. Sometimes my mind floats off to a scene from the Chronicles of Narnia where the adorable Mr. Tumnus is trying to explain the White Witch’s frozen landscapes and fury to Lucy. It often feels like the frozen landscape when I tune into the current administration’s, angry white man / good ‘ole boys club attacks on our eco- systems and now unspeakably working to roll back the Marine Mammal Protection Act, something that is so darn precious to me, something that I have worked for most of my adult life protecting, Perhaps this was the proverbial last straw for me so I decided to take Morrissey’s advice for a bit and tune out.

Morrissey, who released his ever-so-timely, first single in years, Stay In Bed last November urges us all to be good to ourselves. They way Morrissey sees it one of the best ways we can be good to ourselves is to spend a day in bed and to: Stop watching the news, Because the news contrives to frighten you, To make you feel small and alone, To make you feel that your mind isn't your own.

The altered states of anxiety that the news provokes, for we reverent folks, shuffles our emotional wellbeing from sadness and despair, hopelessness and depression to becoming numb and physically ill. With the continued stresses playing out in the world at large be it the consequences of climate change or politics, so many of us are falling prey not only to insomnia, but to a host of radically charged ‘rare diseases’ which mystify allopathic MD’s and up the ante for alternative health practitioners. Our emotional landscapes, our emotional vocabulary, our emotional health largely depends upon how we interpret our environment and how we integrate these interpretations into ourselves. I mean you might be okay if you are a narcissist (lol). But for most of us we have no choice but to pace ourselves, as we move through this life of overwhelm, soldiering on with our emotions in check and for the most part communicating them through emojis. The exception being when a disturbing event or uncomfortable situation arises we simply say, “it was emotional.”

A phrase generally used more on the negative side of emotion than with alacrity. How could we be bothered to discuss the sense of emotion more intently?  Do we no longer have the bandwidth or tolerance for this? Right, there are meds for those whose passions startle the numbed and for goodness sake what about art? Deep art? What happens to the creative journeys our emotions take us on? Where do they go? Will our emotions go beyond woke or will our emotional future be dedicated only in a memory when we choose to feel?

I wonder.

Stay true,

Maggygrace

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Our Emotional Future, Part Deux

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Caught in the Apocalypse