I'm in the midst of reading a transforming and inspiring book called GLAD NO MATTER WHAT by SARK. Living with more gladness and understanding how we feel... and allowing ourselves to FEEL every emotion, even the ones labeled bad can be a challenge. Feeling Good is after all a more desired way of being. Doing whatever it takes to feel good or numb feelings so as not to feel or confront the painful ones can leave unexpressed, ignored emotion that is not heard, to grow larger. As SARK so eloquently puts it, "So 'Not Glad' is not seen or heard and has no choice but to get louder."
I really like the idea that you can work on embracing and experience every emotion and feeling adequately and healthy enough that you can transform to being Glad No Matter What. Because no feeling lasts forever, they're very fluid if we don't go about building a dam to restrain them from their natural ebbs and flow. Children have a natural ability to express emotion freely and fluidly, all of their emotions... so their range of emotion can process at warp speed. As Adults we may think they just don't know how to 'deal with' their emotions, but I think that perhaps they are more acutely instinctive about "feeling" than we are... have you ever just sat back and experienced the contagious Joy of the innocents? The Gladness expressed in Childlike Wonder, Laughter, Smiles, unabashed Love, Living in the Moment and... Skipping... I've often wondered when do we cease to Skip? When was the last time you saw an Adult doing it spontaneously?
I Love being Joyful, I guard my Joy in fact and try not to allow any situation or circumstance to steal it. But I must say that in the realm of emotion and feelings, I can be rather stoic... as a self-protective measure to deal with the tough stuff in life, of which there can be much... especially the chronic tough stuff that must be endured because it is what it is and not something I can control or change. So there are some feelings I stuff... and those feelings roll deep fighting to surface and be acknowledged. I'm not one to go to pieces easily... and when I do it is so foreign to me that I always feel as though I've got to pull it together immediately and suck it up because I view being in pieces and broken as not very functional and more vulnerable than I'm comfortable with. When you are used to operating from a position of strength, showing and expressing weakness can be scary... to you and to those closest to you who aren't accustomed to the rock crumbling and resembling sand on a beach instead! But who can be strong and together all the time, really? So there are many times where it's just an illusion or delusion. *Winks*
I had never read a book by this Author nor had I heard of her before picking up this particular book at the Book Store, so this was wonderful Serendipity at it's best and at just the perfect time. I Love books and so reading is as much a passion of mine as Art, Writing and Collecting. I liked that her book was Artistic and colorful, I liked that it was hand printed as if she were writing us a personal Letter, along with the doodles and snapshots that you would share in a personal correspondence with the recipient of your words and wisdom. And I was "Sold" the moment I opened the book and it "just happened" to fall on the pages where she expressed how she navigated a journey of grief and emotion after losing her beloved Cat of 17 years! That parallel was such a strange coincidence, after the loss of my beloved Rat Boy being so fresh, that it caused me to read further and then be intrigued by the topic of finding and living from the Glad parts in all of your feelings... not about feeling Glad when you don't... but of alchemy of feeling... and I felt I could definitely benefit from some Practical Gladness! *Smiles*
And what sealed it for me was that later in the day I was Grocery Shopping and aimlessly heading down isles when an older Man approached me and said the strangest yet most Beautiful thing. He told me that I looked so Joyful and my countenance had made his day and he just had to say so!!! What a Blessing that statement was my Friend, because you know what, I do attempt to infuse Joy into Living every single day... and yet on this particular day what he couldn't have known were the heavy burdens and challenges I had recently been confronting and wrestling with... and still am in fact... so having Joy was and always is an 'on purpose' occurrance that I choose and hold onto tightly. After all it is the Second Fruit Of The Spirit... and the Joy of the Lord is a most Priceless Gift that I have accepted and infused into daily Living because it benefits not only me, but others as it spills over and out of us from our Life into theirs... as an Unknown Author put it, "Everything will be okay in the end... if it's not okay, it's not the end." Amen to that and here's to being Glad No Matter What!!!
Dawn... The Bohemian
Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so - Shakespeare
*Beautiful images were photographed at RUST & ROSES and ANTIQUE GATHERINGS*