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Where Are My Emotions Now – By pinchas Winston
WHERE ARE MY emotions NOW? This is not a question that most people ask themselves during the course of a day. It’s not even a question that most people think about during their entire life. It’s just assumed that they are where they always are and belong, here and now.
For depressed people, the opposite is true. Their emotions are anywhere BUT in the here and now. They walk outside on a beautiful sunny day and experience only gray clouds. At a simcha, when they should be feeling light and joyous, they feel sad and burdened, and the happiness around them makes them feel even MORE sad and more burdened.
There’s a lot of FEAR too. It’s scary not to be in control, and it’s scariest of ALL when you’re not in control of YOURSELF. If you can’t control yourself, then what CAN you control? And if you can’t control yourself, how can you possibly be happy when you want to be, or sad when you have to be?
Life is full of suffering, whether we are rich or poor, healthy or sick, popular or lonely. Everyone involuntarily suffers in some way and at some point. It’s a characteristic of being human, and a necessity of being Jewish. It’s just the HOW of suffering that varies from person to person.
The rabbis phrased it like this:
According to the suffering is the reward. (Pirkei Avos 5:23)
Many prefer to rephrase the statement as “According to the EFFORT is the reward,” because it sounds more palatable. Although not untrue, it is less accurate because the original Aramaic word is “tzara,” which means “pain.”
Ironically, the English equivalent is more accurate: No pain, no gain. It acknowledges that pain is not only part of life, but important for accomplishment in it. Although the goal is not the pain, we need to recognize that many goals are accomplished only THROUGH pain.
That’s okay, as long as the end result can justify it. For example, people going into business will put up with a lot of suffering—extra schooling, long hours of work, reduced family time—because they believe it will eventually lead to success. Athletes week in and week out put themselves through terrible pain, including grueling training and stressful competition, because it can lead to victory and rich endorsements.
The problem is not the suffering. It is rather the UNPLANNED suffering, the UNCONTROLLABLE suffering, the WASTEFUL suffering, or at least what appears to us at the time to be suffering that just doesn’t make sense. That kind of suffering gets in the way of our life, until we find out later on what it was really about.
A man died and found himself standing before the Heavenly Tribunal. As he waited to see what would become of him, he noticed that he seemed to be in a kind of train station, and it appeared as if a train were slowly approaching down the tracks.
“What’s THAT?” he asked the angel next to him, as a sparkling white train pulled into the station.
“Those are the mitzvos you performed in your lifetime.”
“Really?” The train stopped and all kinds of white angels hopped off and climbed onto what seemed to be one side of a large scale, weighing it down. For the moment, the man felt assured of a place in heaven.
But before he could comment, he saw another train coming from the distance. Confused, he asked the angel, “And what’s THAT?”
“THAT,” the angel said ominously, “are all your sins!”
The man gulped, as a long black train pulled into the station and stopped. He became quite concerned when he saw how very long the train was, and how many black angels ran off it and onto the scale, weighing it down more and more until the sins outweighed the mitzvos. The man now anticipated a long and painful stay in Gehinnom.
Just when he thought all was lost, he saw a THIRD train make its way towards the Tribunal, and he became even more confused.
“A THIRD train?” he asked the angel.
“Oh yes!” the angel replied excitedly. “That train carries all your suffering!”
“My suffering?” the man repeated to himself, as he watched in awe as a beautiful GOLD train pulled in and came to a stop. It wasn’t long, and gold angels floated off the train and onto the scale to add weight to the side of the mitzvos. He waited nervously for the final verdict.
One gold angel, another gold angel…each one slowly pushed the scale farther down in his favor. When it became very close, he was unable to control himself any longer and almost involuntarily yelled out, “MORE SUFFERING! MORE SUFFERING!”
One of the things that allows average people to COPE with THEIR bouts of suffering is the times they DON’T suffer. In between life’s painful moments they usually have a number of happy moments, joyful moments, moments of satisfaction that come from important things, such as personal accomplishments.
And although they may CONSCIOUSLY forget what those moments felt like when they hit emotional snags, all these moments are stored in the UNCONSCIOUS. They remain there for a very long time and contribute to an almost unconscious sense of a good quality of life.
It’s impossible NOT to lose in life at one time or another. Even the greatest do so at certain points. But winning MORE than losing allows people to still feel like winners, even after they have lost. It’s what encourages them to keep trying to win all over again.
People who continue to lose, however, may begin to view themselves as chronic losers. When they perceive that they have lost more than they have won, their past victories may seem imaginary, fleeting, and no longer relevant. They begin to EXPECT to lose, which ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, and then they have no way to cope naturally with their suffering.
Something else that allows non-depressed people to bounce back from loss, in whatever form it takes, is that their emotions are in synch. Because they can feel happy when it is time to be happy, they can be sad when it is time to be sad, without suffering adverse effects. The fact that their emotions are on the same page as their mind enables them to feel that they can afford to be hurt when it’s necessary.
Depressed people can’t feel joy even when they’re having it because their emotions are somewhere else. They can SEE that they’re experiencing what should be a joyous occasion, but the emotions necessary to FEEL and CONFIRM it just aren’t there. They’re somewhere else, busy, in another place, DISTRACTED, feeling other and inappropriate emotions, such as sadness or fear.
This lack of emotional synch only compounds their negative feelings. The lack of emotional control scares them even more, making them feel cheated out of pleasure that is rightfully theirs. How could they not feel hopeless and more depressed when that happens day in and day out?
Ironically, it is the same when they want to feel sad but can’t. People WANT to mourn the loss of a close relative or friend. It is normal and healthy, but when they feel emotionally numb at such moments, they wonder, “What’s WRONG with me?” They then become even more scared and down on themselves. After all, they can SEE what they’re supposed to be feeling, so why can’t they actually feel it?
Everyday prayer can also be an occasion for AWOL emotions, as one person describes:
Praying to God, especially Shemoneh Esrei, is like entering the Kodesh Kodashim, the Holy of Holies. It’s a time that you come face to face with God, so to speak, and therefore a time when you want to think only about what is relevant to such a holy moment. But that is exactly when I start to have bothersome and intrusive thoughts. If I have the same thoughts during other times of the day, I might not even pay attention to them. But during Shemoneh Esrei? It is especially disturbing to me because I can’t stop them from coming, and it defiles my prayer. I get so upset sometimes that I even lose track of where I am in the prayer. How can the whole experience not be disappointing, and depressing? I end up feeling robbed of such an important opportunity to connect to God!
How true, sort of. Yes, an important opportunity to connect to God has been squandered, but not because of the intrusive thoughts per se. They certainly played a significant role in the unfortunate chain of events, but not the MAIN one. THESE THOUGHTS were just a diversion, something like that person down the street, for example, who pretends to faint in order to distract the attention of passers-by so that someone else can rob the bank at the other end of the street.
The perfect prayer requires both intellect and emotions to be on the same page, literally. If the intellect is not there, the emotions certainly won’t be either. But the person will not notice or care, because it will be as if he didn’t pray at all. This is the case with many people who go “elsewhere” while they are in shul.
If the intellect is there—meaning that person has come to pray and connect to God—but his or her emotions are not also there, then he or she will have a unfulfilling experience. The feeling will be one of having been cheated of a spiritual opportunity, and it will be disappointing, depressing, and frustrating.
This is why the rabbis of the Mishnaic Era used to spend an hour preparing for prayer. They used that time to align their emotions with their intellect, so that they would be 100 percent there when talking to God. You wouldn’t take a personal phone call while talking to your CEO, so why take a personal thought while talking to THE CEO of Creation?
If you think about all your most memorable experiences, you might recall how your emotions were in synch with your intellect. They were there, in the moment, undistracted, allowing you to FEEL what you THOUGHT and experienced, and there is NOTHING more real than that.
Because at the end of the day, that is what counts most, REALITY. We want to FEEL that we exist, not just KNOW it. And for THAT, we need our emotions to work together with our intellect, whether to feel happy or sad, as reality requires. Life is a battle for sure, and we have a MUCH greater chance of winning it if we understand this idea, and how to use it to our advantage.
