Ode to an Open Heart

Again and again

I succumb to Love’s whispers

To open my heart

Like a daffodil in the spring,

My heart opens

Knowing well

That this openness

Is spacious enough to hold not only Joy, Wonder, and Gratitude

But also

Grief, Yearning, and Sorrow

And so

Again and again

I lay my open heart

At Love’s altar

Knowing well

That an open heart

Is the doorway to

Wholeness

This poem came to me in the shower while Paloma Faith’s song “Only Love Can Hurt Like This” was playing in my mind. Somehow, something in that song strikes a chord within me. As a self-disclosed sentimental person fond of the bittersweet things in life, I find myself poignantly moved by sad music and stirred by the fragile and transitory state of being human. Anything from people-watching to observing a colorful sunset can move me to such states of mind.

The thought of my significant other can fill me with such gratitude that my eyes get watery. And if my imagination takes a dark turn and I envision something painful happening to my father or brother, my heart twists in vicarious agony. In a sense, the people (and furry friends) I love most are my kryptonite. Sometimes loving so much can feel like kryptonite, because it also opens our hearts to a whole gamut of emotions.

But who is to say these painful emotions are necessarily bad? Personally, I think feeling a wide spectrum of emotions is part of an enriching human experience. And research seems to agree with me on this one. Academics at the Greater Good Science Center wrote an article entitled “Variety Is the Spice of Emotional Life” describing how feeling a wide range of emotions – both positive and negative – is linked with greater well-being. And so, cultivating a diversity of emotions by becoming familiar with your emotional terrain and allowing yourself to feel your Feels might be a good place to start.

Check out this infographic from the article:

Photo credited to the Greater Good Science Center

A misconception about well-being is that it’s about being cheerful all the time. This is simply untrue! An October 2012 study found that “it might be better for our overall happiness to feel emotions like anger at appropriate times, rather than seeking happiness no matter the situation.” In this way, making space for so-called negative emotions is important.

There is a time and a place for painful emotions and positive emotions. To thrive and to “fly”, we need to open ourselves to feeling both.

Friends, before we bid each other farewell, I feel called to share one more research-backed tidbit about emotions: Neuroscientists have found that the physiology underpinning emotional responses lasts only 90 seconds. In other words, it only takes about 90 seconds to notice and feel an emotion before the emotion will dissipate on its own. As put by researcher Jill Bolte Taylor: “From the moment you have the thought that there’s a threat and that circuit of fear gets triggered, it will stimulate the emotional circuitry related to it, which is the fight-or-flight reaction. That will trigger a physiological dumpage of usually norepinephrine into the bloodstream. It will flush through you and flush out of you in less than 90 seconds. So from the moment you think the thought that triggers that whole cascade of events to the chemical flushing out of you takes less than 90 seconds” (PsychologyToday).

And so…what’s the moral of the story here? If emotional repression is familiar to you, perhaps give yourself permission to feel your feelings. Paradoxically, people sometimes subconsciously stay in their heads in an attempt to avoid feeling into their bodies, when the truth is, feeling our emotions is what ultimately helps us release them.

My friend, I know all the above is much easier said than done. Trust me, I’m still working on this myself. We are on this path together :)