- Respond, in your own words, and referencing your own experiences, to the validity of Gay’s question: “What if joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another?”
I don’t think you can experience joy without experiencing pain, because how would you know what is a good feeling vs. a bad feeling if you never know both? Part of this is being in tune with your emotions and knowing how you feel in the moment. For me, it’s common to just go through the motions; go to class, go to practice, make sure I eat 3 meals, get my homework done, hang out with friends when I can, but I have been working on thinking about how I feel. If I only focus on getting things done and never about whether or not I enjoy these things, how will I ever know what I enjoy? This has been my mindset for years, a day in day out kind of mentality. Now that I’m more in tune with my emotions, I feel more pain than I have before in my life, but at least now I can figure out what makes me happy.
- Gay advocates that we “lay down our swords and invite sorrow in.” What does he mean? Do you agree? Why or why not?
Gay is talking about being in touch with your emotions. Acknowledging your feelings, letting them just be, and finding solutions that allow these feelings to exist while you work with them. By “laying down our swords” we try to work with our emotions rather than suppressing them. Pushing feelings to the side or fighting them and pretending everything is OK leads to them bottling up inside. No matter how much you fight it, these bottled up feelings will resurface (usually in a traumatic/extreme situation) and not in the friendly way they did the first time.
A problem could be that maybe you acknowledge these emotions too much, and then you wallow over them. It is important to know when to feel these feelings and when to live in the moment.
- What, very specifically, incites joy in your life? Make a specific/descriptive list of at least ten things: the moment just before my favorite band walks on stage; walking through crunchy leaves; the feeling after a difficult but fruitful conversation, etc. Be as specific as possible.
– The shared excitement between me and my dog when reuniting
– The feeling after a thoughtful conversation
– The sound of being underwater
– The peace I feel during/after yoga and meditation
– Listening to good music through sound-proof headphones
– When my team scores a goal (my team or professional team)
– first sip of good coffee in the morning
– juicy watermelon / crunchy apple
– Investing in a good book
– Hugs
- What do you notice about your list? What does the list reveal about you and the ways in which you engage with the world?
Most of them require doing something a little difficult beforehand: not seeing my dog, having an in depth conversation, exercising/focusing, playing a game, putting in time to read.
