I invite you to try the Four N's: to notice the emotions, name them, negotiate with them, and navigate with them into your everyday life to lean into greater mindfulness with your daily emotional experiences. A promising idea is that God shows up as your life. As Parker Palmer says, “Let your life speak.”[1] There is nothing more fundamental and universal in our lives than our emotions. We are easily distracted, disoriented, and disrupted by the events of our lives. What if we could pause to welcome these emotions as invitations to pay attention to the loving safety God is offering us through re-centering? American author and theologian Fredrick Buechner wrote, “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness; touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”[2]
According to Plato, Socrates lamented that “an unexamined life is not worth living.” Look at each of the core emotions in turn, and explore what each one may offer as an invitation for you to examine your life and seek wisdom, growth, and healing. Ask what may be really going on with each emotion as a response to life’s experiences: What buried emotional wounds may be being triggered? What longing for love and safety may be being exposed? How might a false self be hiding your true identitt through repressed or unexpressed emotions? How, through a truly examined life, might you live in a more meaningful and satisfying way? Emotional intelligence is vital to experiencing satisfying relationships. Satisfying relationships are the most important thing for wellbeing. The point is not to shame anyone for a lack of some emotional intelligence, nor is the point to push anyone to try harder to feel anything. Rather, I hope meaningful reflections on one's emotions will open people to at least one step further along a path of a truly examined life that is well worth living.
[1] Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass: A Wiley Co., 2000).
[2] Fredrick Buechner, Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991), 87.
