Last week, while in my garage gathering tools for working in my yard, I heard the sound of a bee buzzing. Interpreting the buzz as angry, I made haste from the garage as I am allergic to bee stings. A few days later, I found the bee dead on the table in the garage and realizing my mistake, tears sprung to my eyes.
The bee was the endangered honey bee and had been serving in my yard. In feeling my sorrow at it’s preventable death, I realized my mistake. I had heard the bee’s buzzing as anger and it was my response to anger-not my medical risk-that led me to turn away from helping the bee escape the garage.
Now, you might be thinking “Really JaiKaur….you are going to feel badly about something as small as a dead bee!?”. My short answer is yes….my longer answer is there is nothing small about the power of emotions. Taking the care and time to tend to our emotions, can lead to learning both surprising as well as powerful.
In my family growing up, anger was the emotion most common and used often as a stand-in for other emotions being felt. Sadness, disappointment, anxiety and more were also present, but these emotions were not safe for expression (and they signaled weakness). The “one size fits all” of anger in our family meant anger expressed was often emotional messaging confused.
My commitment to renovate my relationship with emotions has resulted in benefits great. I have learned emotions-not unlike the written language-have a poetry as well….. poetry being where rules step aside for an expression of soul. The poetry of this dead bee offered itself for learning how I responded to my perception of anger with fear. And if my misunderstanding of an emotion led to the death of a bee, where else were my emotional misperceptions creating harm?
In your daily life, in your relationships and love, in your longing to live your wild and precious gift of life….where are you misunderstanding an emotion? Here are suggestions for updating your relationship with your emotions:
- Anger is an emotion that has gotten a bad rap and an emotion often used to cover other, more vulnerable, emotions. Where do you use anger to cover other emotions or to diminish your intimacy with others? (Mmm….)
- What emotions scare you-in yourself and when expressed by others? What scares you about this emotion? What do you believe would happen if you simply let yourself feel emotion instead of controlling your emotions?
- Where do you find yourself hijacked by your response to other people’s emotions-otherwise known as reacting? Ask yourself if reacting to the other person somehow keeps you safe, for often our reactions stem from our need to be safe or in control.
- What we consider safe at one stage of life will change with time and learning from our experiences in life. What reactions to emotions of yours are old hat and need to be updated? (Hint-they are the ones where you don’t feel better after you react).
We have been taught to label our emotions as “good/bad, right/wrong, spiritual/not spiritual etc”. Emotions are simply energy offering us understanding and wisdom about our life, as long as we can allow the emotion to unfold. The next time you find yourself reacting to an emotion-yours or another’s-pause and invite yourself to become open and curious instead. I did and the poetry of a bee brought me learning for understanding the difference between anger and a call for help.