I am starting to think that emotions are like investments. When I expend an emotion on something, I am literally making a investment in that area. So a question that I pondered today, where am I spending my emotions? Do I find my emotions being put into things that I have no control over and will yield me little to no results? Well, unfortunately for me, the answer is yes. I realized today that I was fixated for a little while on a news story that got me upset. I realized I was feeling this emotion of anger then discouragement, and finally frustration.
As I thought about the emotion that I was feeling. This is one of the great things about meditation, you are trained to stop and ask yourself why you are feeling a particular way. When I am having a strong emotional reaction, I liked to ask myself why. I realized that my emotions were being manipulated by this news story. I suddenly realized that there was probably a team of people at some news agency trying to figure out how they could manipulate me into feeling more emotion. I do not think they care if the emotion is good or bad, as long as I have a reaction. A reaction means that I tune in more, which was exactly what I was doing. When I got home from driving, I felt drained and emotionally drawn out. That is because these leaches were sucking the life out me on my commute home today!
So that emotional deposit today went absolutely no where. I will gain nothing from that debit, and my anguish did nothing to impact the situation whatsoever. So it was a wasted investment. It will no worse then taking money and throwing it into a fireplace. I did the same thing today. Took my valuable and precious emotions and beat their proverbial head against the wall. This got me to start cataloging everywhere else that I am spending emotional currency. Eye opening to say the least.
I need to learn to invest emotion rather than get caught up into wasteful spending.
Guy Reams
