Filling Up the Tank

“Emotions are the fuel to really move you along - that's the only way you can create music. If you don't feel any emotions, it's not going to happen.” ~ Jan Hammer


In one of her comments to one of my posts, friend and fellow writer Alice Grist described how hearing of the success a childhood friend experienced in her career, motivated her to stir her own creative juices and start writing professionally.

Although their friendship had ended many years before while still children, their mothers were still occasionally in contact and shared information about their respective daughters; when Alice heard that her friend had become a writer and journalist -- something she had always wanted as well and never pursued -- she was overcome by jealousy.

Jealousy, envy, anger and all other emotions customarily considered negative ones are usually seen as a deterrent to success and personal growth, but in Alice’s case, jealousy and a sense of competition were the main ingredients of a fuel that propelled her toward tapping into her hidden talent and developing a career in writing.

Born from the ego, emotions are often confused with feelings from the heart. It is very common to hear people talking about amorous jealousy being connected to true love, while in reality the two are as different from one another as day and night – the feeling of love knows no jealousy because love is all-encompassing and well-wishing; we love our children and wish them to be happy with the right person; by no mean we would want our love for them to become a prison, because true love doesn’t need to own anything or anyone. Jealousy is instead connected to fear, the opposite of love.

Generally speaking, emotions are a cursed lot we don’t need to call upon, unless, of course, we can channel their fire in a creative way.

When one of my friends found out her husband was determined to dissolve their marriage, she was crushed. When he left, she became angry. At the time, her anger served a purpose, and it allowed her to pump steel into her spine while she tried to pick up the pieces of her life. Anger held her up from the impulse of drowning into self-pity, and gave her strength in the early days of the separation.

In Alice’s situation, the feeling of dissatisfaction with the self which resulted from comparing her stalling writing success to her friend’s prolific venture, led her to shake off the invisible chains that held her back from reaching her own true potential. Today, Alice Grist is a highly-respected author and a very creative businesswoman.

My mother always explained it best – no matter what it flows through, or what it feeds, electricity is still electricity. The energy invested in the charge connected to specific emotions is still energy; channeled through our intent but neutral in nature. So, if energy can begin in a neutral state and be transformed into a negative or positive charge through our choice of thoughts, certainly the reverse process can happen as well, and we can use the directing power of our thoughts to channel a negative charge and transform it into a positive one.

If we can concentrate on shifting our focus whenever we feel a negative charge rise up in response to something unpleasant, and direct the fire of our emotions toward positive mental images, we can now pour fuel into a plane which will take us where we desire to be.

We can’t always choose what happens around us, but we have the power to choose what we will do with it. If someone offered you free gasoline for your car, you would never dream of turning down the offer; wasting the opportunity to employ free, good mental fuel is not too smart either.

Until Death Do Us Part: A Reflection on Love

In The Lady or the Tiger? Frank Stockton explores the impact of emotions on human decisions, especially when one must choose between passion and true love. http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/LadyTige.shtml

In the story, a barbaric king chooses to leave justice to divine law and orders an arena to be built. From that day on, when one of his subjects is accused of breaking laws or is found guilty of otherwise questionable behavior, the king condemns the poor soul to meet his destiny in the arena. Behind two doors of the arena hide both an aggressive tiger and a beautiful maiden. The prisoner himself chooses which door to unlatch, and his fate is sealed – he will either be killed by the tiger or married to the maiden. Either way, no human decision will have any weight on the outcome; if killed by the tiger the subject is believed to have been guilty and promptly punished, while if he makes it out alive, he immediately receives a reward for his innocence by marrying a beautiful woman.

It so happens that the king’s only daughter, a young woman just as intense as her father, falls in love with a handsome young fellow who is, unfortunately, not a noble man. When word of the forbidden affair gets to the king, he immediately orders the young man to be imprisoned and condemns him to be judged in the arena.

As the day of the final judgment approaches, a ferocious tiger and the most beautiful maiden in the kingdom are chosen, and both are hidden behind the doors. When everything is ready, the young man is led into the arena, where he bows in front of the king and his daughter before courageously taking his place in front of the two doors. Before pulling one of the levers, he meets his lover’s apprehensive gaze and waits for a sign. Now, the king’s daughter knows exactly which door hides the tiger and which door hides the maiden, but she’s torn in her decision – if she signals to the door hiding the tiger, her lover will die, while if she signals toward the door hiding the maiden he will be saved but he will be forced to marry the young girl whom she is already jealous of.

Finally she makes her choice, and subtly lifts her right arm only for her lover to see. Without a doubt, the young man approaches the right door and opens it. At this point the story ends, leaving the reader wondering whether the unfortunate young fellow will live or die. This quite ambiguous ending is intentional, and it triggers a reflection upon the type of emotions which rule our decisions. Which door do you think the young man opens, and why?

When my son and I read the story together, we had opposite ideas – I thought the princess indicated the door with the maiden, while my son believed she signaled the door with the tiger. When I asked him why, his answer was simple – the princess was jealous and she preferred to see her young lover dead rather than happy in the arms of another woman. When I explained the story to other people I know and posed the question to them, they answered the same way my son did.

Indeed, passion and jealousy are powerful forces, able to cloud our better judgment. Quite often, we subconsciously wish to control the people we claim to love, and the mere thought of our loved ones happy with someone else triggers feelings of self-doubt we are unprepared to deal with.

True love is not threatened by competition, and it shouldn’t fill us with a need to “own” people, but rather with a feeling of joy at the thought of seeing our loved ones happy, with or without us, similarly to the way we feel toward our children. We don’t have to physically be with someone to love them, as being in love shouldn’t be equal to being in need. Too often we look toward our outside world to find what we should seek within to fill the void, and unfortunately, many of those relationships meet an unfortunate ending.

I suppose the fate of the young man will forever remain in the eye of the beholder, and that each person will choose the ending most appropriate to their way of seeing love, but for myself I really hope the princess made the right decision and allowed her lover live.

Is That What I Truly Want?

In the many years we have known each other, I‘ve always heard my friend Caroline complain of the fact that she lives alone and has no children. Yet, every time she comes to my house for the day – and is exposed to the zoo of family life for more than an hour – she is ready to bolt out the door and find the peace and solitude she habitually claims to hate.
I often hear people complain about everything; their spouses, their homes, their jobs, their children, the time they spend alone. As humans, we spend a great deal of our time focusing on, and complaining about, what we don’t have, never really ready to acknowledge the fact that what we do have is truly what’s right for us.
We behave similarly in relation to weather conditions. In the winter we dream of being somewhere warm; we complain of the cold and rain, and can hardly wait for the dog days of summer, when, once again, we’ll be able to shed the heavy clothes and feel the hot kiss of sunshine on our skin. Yet, as soon as summer comes - after just a few weeks - we complain of the heat, and talk dreamily of the cool weather we will experience in the fall and winter.
Opposite conditions allow us to appreciate what we normally take for granted.
Many can relate to the excitement felt when company is ready to come visit; we plan wonderful moments and are eager to catch up on conversations; yet, after a few days, we are ready to claim back the life we had, our routines, our moments alone. It’s not that we don’t love the company, but we are ready to be back in our own space.
Ultimately, if we never lost our jobs, we’d never appreciate the sense of security which derives from being employed; if we never had a day of rain, we’d never appreciate a day of sunshine; if we never had anyone treating us wrong, we’d never recognize, or appreciate, a true friend when he or she comes along.
We can choose to look at our seemingly unfulfilled lives and experiences as a sentence we are forced to serve, but by doing so we only rob ourselves from the opportunity of being happy.
At times, changes are in order and can improve our lives, but often we simply need to make an honest assessment of how much we truly wish for things to be altered. We can begin by asking ourselves if our lives would be better or worse if we take a different turn.
When we look at the neighbor’s grass, and wish it was our own, we should also ask ourselves if we’d be happy and ready to commit to the daily amount of work required to keep it so green.