Feeling as if I don’t have enough time rankled me for as long as I remember. Perhaps that emotion is a holdover from school days when I had tests, exams, and papers due that I had procrastinated to prepare, most likely because I was distracted by other interests like wanting to ride my ponies and be outside in nature instead of sitting in a hermetically sealed room all day at a right-handed desk (I am a south paw), not moving around too much. Running around with our dogs, jumping over rocks, climbing Pine trees, ‘capture the flag’ and ‘bloody murder’ with neighborhood friends in the field behind our house, swimming in the creek at my grandparents’ farm, fishing for critters in the stream across the street, picking Daffodils and pungent Peonies for my mom in the spring, riding bikes to my friends’ houses, building elaborate hay forts in the barn at my cousins, long trail rides on my pony in the woods scouting out limitless different birds, plants, flowers, rocks, fruit trees…wistfully, that was my preferred education.
Industrial Age education was a slow swim upstream because far too much of that form of schooling was not interesting to me – especially after my youngest brother died when I was 10 years old. While one light went out in me, another one turned on. Simply, my beloved 2-year-old baby brother died leaving a gaping hole and utter chaos not only in my family but also in me, so I was no longer interested in my teachers or what they had to teach me. My insatiable curiosity about the how’s and why’s of the world, especially how could God take a 2-year-old, was far bigger than the classroom allowed or a lecture on isthmuses.
I desired to travel to Egypt to climb the great pyramids where I imagined King Tut, not just draw them after I’d read about them in a book. I dreamed of swimming with a pod of dolphins in the ocean instead of writing a ten-page research paper about them from the encyclopedia. Papier mache animals and puppets, fire-kilned throw pots, and large paintings were created under the tutelage of Mrs. Keeney and I yearned to stay in the art room with her all day versus trudging back to our classroom to diagram sentences.
And math…I’ll let that one settle with the Creatives who are reading this. I’m still quite slow in the math department but thankfully there’s a contraption called a calculator. Math really took a bite out of me. Math made me feel stupid, embarrassed, and unworthy, especially when I failed the college entrance math test and had to take Math 100 to acquire my bachelor’s degree – in English/Creative Writing. There’s a lot of math when you’re a writer in case you were wondering. Word count is vital when you’re telling a story. Thankfully, there’s a tool for that too.
Not surprisingly, I embraced sports ravenously and without caution. I was fond of riding my pony bareback, with no helmet, urging him to gallop as fast as possible and jump over three-foot timber fences; I swam until waterlogged – once even beating the fastest boy on the swim team who was a year older than I was. I ran every race to win. Threw every ball with acute aim. My turbulent and undisciplined adolescence was tempered by playing polo which helped abate the groaning hole in my soul.
Competitive sports were a release for me to slake my grief. Even as a young girl, I’d fix my mind to win something, like the “Best Girl Athlete” in my elementary school or deciding to switch from competitive horse showing and swimming to learn to play polo in 7th grade. There’s a large silver trophy encased in a Baltimore school with my named engraved on it.
The classroom made me suffer like a dolt and instilled a sense of “not enough time” that I continue to work on even as I write this. It was nothing shy of a miracle that I was accepted at a decent college and graduated on the six-year plan. Don’t get me wrong, I am very grateful to my parents for the education they paid for. In hindsight, the options were very limited, and I consider myself quite lucky to have come out of the Industrial Age education system as a critical thinker. I did love Professor Victor Kahn Shakespeare’s Tragedies course and was thrilled to get a C – the hardest C I ever worked my tuchis off for.
Sports invigorated me while the classroom infuriated me because I felt stupid, my own wires strumming, I would rather ride a galloping horse with a mallet in my hand chasing a ball than learn chemistry. So much anger released inside me when I competed. No one taught me to recognize my emotions, much less how to release them. Grief, lack, stupidity were just part of the feeling hand God dealt me – or so I was told. Figure out how to deal.
It took me decades to realize that I was not stupid, but rather an intelligent being, no thanks to school, but rather because of my own relationships with books, articles, conversations, and immense intellectual curiosity. Admittedly, there are times when I have been and am ignorant on a subject, but I know I am not stupid.
Before that epiphany, somehow, I equated stupidity and not enough time. “I am so stupid that I procrastinated studying for the exam tomorrow…I am so stupid that I still don’t understand the constellations in the sky and I have an oral report to give the class tomorrow…I am so stupid that I didn’t do such and such on time…”
We’ve all done it. I still do.
Cling to feelings even though they feel unpleasant. Doubt. Rage. Frustration. Loss. Confusion. Shame. Guilt. Grief. Anger. Pride…all the good ones. Our thoughts take us back to the moment of the incident as if it is happening in real time. Here’s a dispiriting memory, my ninth-grade French teacher asked me this in front of the entire class when I had failed to prepare my homework, “Are you lazy or are you stupid?” The saliva in my mouth waters today wanting to spit on that woman nearly forty years later. And then my mind launches into whatever inner story I have about myself that accompanies this demoralizing feeling.
“I’m out of control…I’m ugly…I don’t have enough time…I resent my situation…I’m unlovable…I’m not good enough…I’m pissed off because my friend/coach/mom let me down…I’m embarrassed…I’m stupid.”
For me as a Spiritual Life Coach, I’ve learned to pay attention to these suffering feelings and where I feel them in my body. I notice that my stomach clenches like a balled-up fist and a channel of negative energy erupts like Mt. Vesuvius up through my torso, my heart, and into and out my shoulders spreading gunk into my energetic tube that surrounds me. You may feel it elsewhere in your body, like your legs are tingly or your shoulder stiffens, but for me, it is anchored in my stomach and sprouts up. I do not like these feelings. I used to punch them away oftentimes instead of taking the time to feel them. They are feelings, though. To feel. Feelings do not lie. They are honest. No one is allowed to say to you, “You shouldn’t feel that way.”
Nope. Never.
Whatever you are feeling, is not about them out there. The feeling you have is about what was triggered – what is going on inside of you. Recognize the feeling and feel it. I’ve forgiven Madame for asking me if I was lazy or stupid. I knew the answer then and I know it now.
Triggers do occur for me in other arenas and the debris hangs around me like a putrid puke bucket around my neck. I’ll let you in on an important tip: It is a gift to feel…even the hideous feelings.
Attempting to punch the ugly feelings away, doesn’t do more than when you punch the blow-up clown in the nose, it retracts, but boomerangs back into the upright position directly where it started when you punched in the first place. When we have an emotion, it only takes 90-seconds for it to move through our body if we allow ourselves to recognize it and feel it. But if we resist the feeling, it can linger for 90-years.
So, what happens if we just feel our emotions? Will they just naturally pass?
Many do.
Release is your greatest opportunity to take the puke bucket and clean it out, clearing the emotion and recycling it back to God, who returns it back into light. If we continue to punch the negative emotions versus feeling them, you may find yourselves spitting on your 9th grade French teacher when you’re in your fifties.
The emotion of not having enough time stems from a place of lack. Lack is fear-based and not grounded in God. We feel separate from God, yet I invite you to remember, God lives in between our heartbeats, and never leaves us. What is the opposite of lack? Abundance!
My spiritual life coach taught me this, “All you must do is simply connect with the Divine and return the past program and the energy you associate with that person, place or thing to the Divine. And the Divine does the rest. This releasing work is like a form of recycling. So remember to detach from that stale energy, and give it back to the Divine, this process will help you regain your alignment with the Divine, your true self, and restore your personal rhythm.”
I have an abundance of time. So do you.