I know I share a lot of examples from movies, but bear with me here: one of me and my son’s favorite movies is Shawshank Redemption. It’s got an incredible cast, including Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, and a powerful message (just like all great movies?!). Shashank Redemption is about a man (played by Tim Robbins) who is wrongly imprisoned for a murder that he didn’t commit. As you can imagine, he spends his time running away from thugs and sexual predators while also making friends with a small group that help him pass the time.
There’s an incredible scene where Morgan Freeman, being the old timer, is talking with the newcomer played by Tim Robbins. Robbins had gotten into trouble and had a two month stay in ‘the hole’, which is isolation. Although he seems like a cold fish, someone without any emotion, being isolated for so long seemed to have woken him up. He begins thinking about what he wants for his life. He tells Morgan Freeman’s character that, “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really: get busy living, or get busy dying.”
I found this line fascinating, I have to admit. For a long time Robbins\’ character had dealt with whatever was handed to him in a calm, cool fashion almost as if he had chosen not to feel. But, in this very moment, he was about to take the risk to go after his freedom. He would rather die on his feet going after the life that he actually deserved, than live a half life serving a prison sentence he didn’t want or deserve. Choosing to feel our emotions can sometimes feel exactly like that.
How much safer it is to sit on the sidelines, living a life of not investing too much of yourself, or acknowledging the feelings that you’re having. Not truly loving, connecting, allowing for sorrow, pain, or difficulty all for the safety of avoiding discomfort.
What does that mean, you might be thinking? If you’re going to experience real love, if you’re going to give yourself over to another to the point where you may care about somebody more than you even care about yourself, you cannot help but to be aware that you could lose them. They could go to school, they move away to another city, or, in the worst case scenario, they could pass away. Regardless of the reason, loving them deeply means that if you lose them you’re going to experience grief.
Emotions may feel good to us, or they may be uncomfortable. But, more importantly, emotions are there to stamp their authenticity on us. The fact that we allow ourselves to actually feel grief fully and completely doesn\’t just allow you to experience the grief, it also helps you make sense of how you felt about the relationship that is no longer with you. Consider this when you think about the world in which we live. For almost every word there’s an antonym. For every season there’s an opposite season. There are colors that are on the opposite side of the spectrum. And when there is darkness there is also light. Nobody paints half a picture, or does just half a project. It’s just the same with emotions: they are not two dimensional, they\’re full and robust, and they incorporate not just one feeling but many feelings within them.
If you’re going to choose to love, rest assured you’re also going to choose to feel hurt. If you’re going to choose to experience real joy in your life and allow that in, know that sadness isn’t just waiting for you, but it’s within the joy itself. Emotions change within us as quick as ocean waves drawing up onto the sand in one minute, driving back into the ocean and leaving us in despair the next. The only way to spare yourself from this is to choose not to feel.
Now realize that this choice not to feel isn’t a choice not to have emotions, because all human beings have energy in motion throughout their body. These come from all kinds of biological and chemical reactions, synapses firing and what not. So, it isn’t a choice to not have emotions, rather, what we may choose to do is not to acknowledge them. We may think If we just ignore an emotion it’ll go away. Or we choose to numb it. We try to drink it away. Sex it away. Sugar it away. Yell at somebody else it away. Whatever it takes to ignore it, push it down, or numb it.
The problem is the emotions are always there, and eventually we will feel them. Rest assured this isn\’t a choice of whether or not we are going to have an emotion. This is a choice of whether or not we are going to choose to feel them acknowledge them. All of them. With all of their complexity and all of the information that they provide to us about everything that we are experiencing in our lives. So, the question is, are you going to choose to get busy living or get busy dying?
If you would like to learn how to free yourself from emotional imprisonment, reduce your emotional isolation, lessen your avoidance of shame, fear, and anxiety, to reach your goals, break old habits, or create new ones, I can help. We can meet virtually or in person at my office in Waterbury, Vermont. Just click the button or the link below for a free consultation and let’s talk.
