When you are headed out on a life journey, maybe for the first time, on your own, the road you start out on is, in general, a familiar road that you have been on before… it is only when you’ve been on the journey for awhile… that you get into unfamiliar territory… and have to start looking for the next crossroads… you start slowing down… and checking road or street signs… looking for your next turn.
And… because we haven’t been this way before… we slow down so that we don’t miss it.
Sometimes on the highway, I miss my exit, I have a good song playing, or I’m talking to one of my kids… or I’m thinking about something to write about. I can realize I’ve missed it, grab the next exit, and work my way back to the road I need to get to in order to reach my destination. When I know where that destination is.
On roads. On streets. On woodland trails. When you come to a turn or bend or transition… it’s a good idea to mark that spot with a sign of some sort… especially if this is the first time you’ve been this way.
I feel I’m about to “turn a corner” on my journey and I’d like to leave a marker. For me and… maybe for you.
My familiar road I started out on was a bumpy one. Fraught with immature emotions that would be exacerbated by the frequent, jagged pot holes found in all manner of relationships, and hitting those would cause me to react… irresponsibly, immaturely, and without a shred of self control.
And not always by blowing up in a rage… sometimes, most times, just grabbing the wheel and suppressing, extinguishing, and burying feelings that the only name I could give was “anger”.
“What was your catalyst Dave? What do you think opened your eye’s to the emotional part of your journey?”
Well, as I started to learn how to drive, and was able to steer clear of the pot holes, that gave me time to understand that something else was going on.
Turns out, anger… is just the Christmas wrapping on a 50count Hot Wheels set! of emotions… that are just not defined for most of us.
And the catalyst? When did I really understand?
Don’t laugh, or snicker… I was watching a Sesame Street episode with my granddaughter. With Dave Matthews and Grover. They were discussing, “having a feeling”, that they didn’t have a name for.
Wow.
I had already been working through, or had worked through a few, and each had a new, and specific name, and instead of just looking at the red ANGER gift wrapping, I removed the Hot Wheels slow moving garbage truck… named…
RESENTMENT. And like a garbage truck… I just kept slowly adding to my load, never stopping, never unloading it.
Sesame Street… who would have thought… that that sign would pop up on my road, at my age, and give me the definition of what I had worked through up to this point.
Even at your age, being all mature and everything, can you truly define, specifically, your personal Hot Wheels set of emotions?
Sad… ok, that’s just blue gift wrapping. Being Blue has so many shades!
Anger… that’s a big red roll. Any shade will do. WHO CARES!
Happy… that one is real tricky. Sure, happy is yellow sunshine… but what shade? Day Lily yellow? Lemon yellow? Or Hot Wheels convertible yellow?
On and on they go.
My daily journal writing has allowed me to “see” the thoughts of my mind… SPLASHED across the page… and as I learned how to read those thoughts, sometimes out loud, I learned how to get to the bottom of things.
The resentment one was a real roadblock for me. I sat idling at that crossroad for years. Once I identified it for what it was it allowed me to actually put my vehicle in gear, and finally start to gain some ground on my journey.
The road has smoothed out for me a bit. I’ve had opportunity to apply my new emotional control intelligently, a few times out in the real world… and I have to say, “Boy, was I missing the scenery, when all I was seeing was RED!”
Now, I’m feeling “excited”, as I sit at the intersection of “emotional intelligence” and FEAR!
FEAR… it has a myriad of shades… looking out across it… it looks like a eight lane highway in a game of Frogger!
My merge is going to be “scary” as I’ve never been on this highway before. And that… is ok.
But I now know I don’t have to jerk the wheel in a reactionary manner… I can wait… I don’t have to play “smash up” with the Hot Wheels… I can wait… hit my turn signal… and when the time is right… vroom! vroom!
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