Watching Emotions Fly By

Some emotions just don’t feel good.

When we feel sad, or angry, or anxious, or embarrassed, or some other unpleasant emotion, we tend to also think to ourselves “I don’t like this. How do I change this?”

On the other side of the emotional spectrum, pleasant feelings like happiness, or excitement, or relaxation, or connection often come with the judgment “I like this. I want more of this.”

There’s just one problem with both of these evaluations about our feelings: We can’t control how we feel. At least not directly. We can’t keep from feeling unpleasant emotions, and we can’t make ourselves have more positive emotions.

I don’t mean to give the impression that we’re totally helpless. We can definitely do things to make it more likely we’ll experience unpleasant emotions, or more likely we’ll experience pleasant emotions. 

Emotions are impacted by a number of different factors, some of which we can contribute to. We can take care of our physical health. We can build relationships with safe and supportive people. We can talk to ourselves compassionately. We can engage in activities that we find enjoyable or meaningful. We can participate in our community, or a spiritual practice.

All of these things make a difference, especially when practiced consistently over time.

But, despite all this, we are still going to experience some mix of pleasant and unpleasant emotions. That’s just part of life. We feel happy sometimes. We feel sad sometimes. We feel connected sometimes. We feel disconnected sometimes.

So what do we do with these inevitable emotions, especially the unpleasant ones?

Well, the good news is that you don’t have to do anything with them.

Emotions pass. They are temporary, every single one of them. They come, they go. They show up, build in intensity, and then pass. This is just the natural wave-like movement that they all have, one after the other after the other.

That is, unless you start to mess with them. Most of the emotional problems we run into are because of our resistance to emotions, not because of the emotions themselves. 

Meditation teacher Michael Singer gives the metaphor of emotions being like ripples in the water, and our attempts to change our emotions being like jumping into the water and physically trying to stop the ripples. That’s just going to create a lot more ripples because of all our splashing around.

Watching the Feeder

What else can we do instead?

One of my favorite ways to start the day is to sit out on my back deck with a cup of coffee and watch the bird feeder in my backyard.

There’s something meditative about this, and maybe because it’s a great metaphor for meditation.

As I watch the birdfeeder, different birds come and go. I don’t know which ones will show up, or how long they’ll stay. It’s fun to notice their colors, their movement, the noises they make, and to identify what kinds of birds they are when I can. Some days the feeder is busy with activity, all kinds of birds coming and going. Other days it’s slow, with only a bird or two making an appearance. Sometimes a particular mourning dove lies down in the feeder for a half-hour or so, taking up all the space.

This is exactly what we can do with our emotions. We can watch, noticing with interest the various emotions as they come and go. We can notice their emotional color, the “noise” they make inside us, and watch them move on. Some days are emotionally quieter, some days are more busy. Some days a particular mood just sits around for a while.

We can’t prevent negative emotions or hold onto positive emotions any more than I can chase all the blue jays away from the birdfeeder or only have cardinals show up.

If we can take on this position of watching with interest, not trying to prevent, change, fix, figure out, or otherwise resist our feelings, each emotion will visit for just a little while before flying off. We can actually find a kind of relaxation that persists no matter what emotion visits the feeder.

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