Yesterday I lost my emotions.
I well, I didn’t lose them per se. More like they were taken away from me. Locked away for a few hours.
I woke to a story that made no sense, but which I knew was true. I couldn’t tell who was reading it to me, but I knew it was about me.
“How do you know you’re not alone?”
“You can feel it” I said.
“It’s not working. You’re getting frustrated.”
“Feel for it. It’s there. I swear it’s there.”
“It’s still not working. You’re angry. You want to give up. Nothing is working.”
“Please, just don’t give up. It’s there. If you keep feeling for it, you will find it.”
They continued telling the story, by my mind was somewhere else. I was feeling for it. Right there in the middle of a planned spirtual experience. I was distracted by the real lesson.
I couldn’t.
I realized I couldn’t feel it.
With a sense of alarm I shouted into my thoughts.
“What’s happening to me? Why can’t I feel it?”
They keep reading.
I panic.
I can’t feel it. I can’t feel the panic. Where there should be panic there is… nothing. I can think. I can intuit. I can feel my body. I hear and see the story in my mind.
But I have no emotions anymore. They are gone. All gone.
I want to be angry. I scream at the storyteller. The story falters, becomes something confusing, like a dream that makes a hard turn. I am so angry but I can’t feel it. I can’t feel it and so it doesn’t happen.
I want to be afraid, to be angry, to be horrified and distraught. But I truly, truly cannot feel.
Someone offers me chocolate pie. I flip my lid.
It’s a hollow, timid rage. I can’t even feel guilty for lashing out at this unseen person. Why the hell are they offering me pie while I melt down?
I get out of bed. I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t dreaming. I know I wasn’t. The story and the storytellers are gone.
But I still cannot feel.
I act out a pattern that would be controlled terror. That’s probably what it looked like.
What do I do? They’re gone. My fucking emotions are gone. Am I going to stay like this? What did I do? What did I do wrong?
“What the fuck did you do to me!?” I yell into my own thoughts.
But where there should be a sea of rage and confusion, there is only an artificial calm. An erratic mind that doesn’t feel anything about itself.
And so, I sit down to meditate. I think of my wife, my children. My happiest and saddest moments. Only thinking of these brings the very faintest feeling back. It is as if my joy and despair are someone else’s. They are not the bonfire in my chest they should be. They are a candle in another home across the street, glimpsed through the window. Only a moment and then the shades are drawn.
This seems poetic, like a curious thought exercise. You may treat it that way, if you wish, but this was a reality for me, for a few hours, one morning not long ago.
For two hours I was a man without a trace of emotion.
And it was one of the worst experiences of my entire life.
I put on the most inspiring, joyful music I could find and then dropped into a dark, silent meditation — packed with fear I could not feel.
“Give them back!” I screamed.
“Give me my anger. Give my sadness. My happiness, my frustration.”
“Give them back to me…” I sobbed, talking alone in a closet.
There was a moment of silence before a thought occurred to me. Calm, deep, and deadly serious. The kind of words that, you know, will not be followed by more words. Like “Stop or I’ll shoot.”, or “Get your hands off my wife”, or “You shall not pass.”
Here is the thought that eventually explains what we are:
“You can have them back when you deserve them.”
—
The rest of that memory for me, and thought experiment for you, is immaterial.
When something important you cannot explain happens to you, the most important question to ask is not “What’s wrong with me?”, “Am I crazy?”
It’s what does this mean?
Why would this be happening right now?
What might I learn from this?
And one of my personal favorites:
How can I use this?
The moment I sincerely set about answering that last question, then and only then did my emotions start to creep back in. Like color bleeding back into film strip. I could feel it all again.
“They were never gone. You simply couldn’t feel them.”
People who do not appreciate their emotions do not deserve them. I will never again be one of those people, because I know now what it is like to want my anger, my sadness, my terror.
Only a person who has experienced how awful it is to not feel could truly appreciate even the “bad” feelings. Nothing is so much worse. My god, it is so much worse.
—
But why did that happen?
Regardless of what lesson I derived, which was apparently sufficient, who made it happen and why did it happen to me?
The answer to that provides a glimpse into the deepest inner workings of the universe.
It wants things for us. We want things from it.
It is always asking us questions. It does not ask with words very often. It asks with experiences. With challenges. With surprises. It asks questions that are answers to your questions and yet, are an open question in themselves. Like an endless chain of curiosity. Sated and then piqued again.
It only ends when you stop playing, because it never will. Back and forth, back and forth.
So why did that happen? From this perspective, it becomes clear.
The universe itself was posing a question to me through an experience. One I did’nt ask for and could’t ignore.
“What are you?”
And I, in turn, answered with a question of my own.
“What am I?”
I am a man who sees the value in all emotions, even the ones others cannot appreciate the way I do.
It’s always trying to figure us out. Reality, the universe. What are you?
Because it doesn’t know. Not entirely. It’s trying to understand each and every one of us.
And by playing along we, in turn, learn to better understand ourselves.
I am a man who sees the value in all emotion.
Two days ago I didn’t know that. And now we both now. Now we all know.
That’s why it happened
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