Don't Think, Feel. Don't Feel, Think.

“To feel deeply is a wonderful gift,” they say. 

Don’t misquote me; I love the ability to feel deeply. I love the connection that comes from breathing in beauty and almost being able to taste it. I love the palpability of emotions: Intricate, somewhat unstable, and wildly uncontrollable like a spark that can either light a flame or burn down a city. 

To harness such a gift would seem inhumane and unnatural. It would seem as though we were taking electricity and caging it. 

And yet 

When the ability to feel is so strong, some times that electricity manifests more sensation that one human heart can hold. To feel deeply can be consuming, shutting out logic, forcing out any conflicting thought which beckons us back in to reality (even if reality, is in fact, correct.) Feeling can be both a great friend and a nemesis. A great bearer of truth, or the father of lies. Feeling can lead to factual understanding, yet, it can also lead to demise. 

So

I find myself stuck between this war of two worlds…Fact and Feeling. Mind & Heart. If both have a place, how do I juxtapose the two? How do I allow this consuming wave of deep feeling to guide rather than drown?  How do I choose to be honest even in the raw, ugly, uncontrollable truth of ‘feel’?

I take a breath; an inhale of the truth that exists in the chaos of my heart. I pause, for just a second longer to remind my lungs they know how to fill & also how to empty. I sort through every thought and pay attention to each one, no matter how categorically dramatic or ‘false’ they may sound. The logic meets the feeling with a gentle smile as it reminds my lungs to empty. 

“To feel deeply is a wonderful gift," and I will enjoy the juxtaposition of thinking about all that I feel, and feeling all that I think until the two intersect, collide, and make peace. 

-RS