Feelings

The parables, the allegories, the fairy tales and movies and even television exaggerate the good and the bad as if we might miss it were it not made bigger than life.

And perhaps we might if we were always a third person looking in, because watching is not the same thing as feeling.

I love live music.  Often it does not even matter if it is music I would choose, but the fact that it is live pulls me in.  I feel the vibrations, the notes, the energy of the musicians.  I feel it's aliveness!  Without that, were it only on the radio or on a DVD, I might not listen to it at all.

Feelings are the barometer of life.

They generate unnecessary cruel words when a shrug would work. They filter kind actions through unkind thoughts and do the opposite of their intention.  As unavoidable as breathing, they can wreak more havoc than anything else in the world.

I do not want to censor them, but I need a trustworthy translator and some kind of reins to pull them in when they run away with me.

If only I could catch them like fireflies and put them in a jar. Being able to look at them when I will, or put them under a microscope, or perhaps just set them on the back shelf of the pantry until I am able to deal with them, might make life more bearable and even rational.

But the real world is not that simple.  It asks me to be judge and jury and comforter and consoler of my own feelings and, more often than not, I am harsher than is necessary. The good is not saintly.  The bad is not intentional evil. The end is truly just another beginning and who knows where that might go.