How does awareness of our ever-changing emotions affect daily life? A woman I know who is a meditator, and the mother of a ten-year-old boy, sheds some light on the question.
"Sometime late in the afternoon my son, Danny, got antsy and began to run around the living room. Fairly soon I heard my daughter cry. Danny had tripped her. After a mild rebuke, I tried to divert his attention by suggesting that he play a game on his Xbox. You would have thought I told him to eat worms! He stomped and screamed at me, and before I knew it, I was screaming back at him. In my effort to calm him down, I became as out-of-control as he was.
"If only I had remembered to watch my emotions rise, manifest and fade instead of grabbing on and riding them like a bucking bronco. I got thrown and trampled in the process!!!! How I wish I had watched that bucking bronco instead of hopping on!"
This Mom responded to her son's fleeting mood as if it were a mighty force that had to be conquered. In so doing she pumped lots of energy into that late afternoon fiasco. The good news is that she was aware of it and so not completely lost. I wonder what would have happened if she had, as she wished, stepped aside and simply observed her own upset.
What happens for you?
