I’m feeling kind of purple today.

 

I know – what? Let me explain. This morning I decided that I was going to wear pink to celebrate the day before Valentine’s Day. We’re doing some special celebrating on Valentine’s Day itself at the spa, so I’m gonna spend most of the day in a robe and not in my own clothes. Otherwise I’d probably be in red like lots of people on Valentine’s Day.

Back to the purple thing… I was standing there in the closet, looking for a pink shirt (cause I hardly ever wear pink), and my eyes kept going to my purple long sleeved tee. When I went to pack a nightgown for our spa night, I picked up my pink and purple lounge pants (but they’re light and it’s just too cold today). I bought purple flowers at the store yesterday. When I sat down to do my makeup, I planned to do a very natural face with a dramatic cat-eye eyeliner and nude mouth and ended up with plum lipstick. I sat down to plan my day and get started with creating my new bullet journal (that’s a whole ‘notha post) and grabbed my tiny purple candle to burn while I work. What’s with all the purple?

 

 

It’d be nice if I could tell you what all the purple is about, but I really don’t know. Recently I was listening to this inspirational video my brother sent me and one of the speakers in the video was hammering away at how you can’t “stay in your feelings”, because if you wait to feel like doing what you need to do, you’ll never get it done. I loved the video, but that one part rubbed me the wrong way. We often live in a space of suck-it-up-and-get-it-done. While I agree that you won’t always feel like doing what needs to be done, too much of this attitude disconnects us from actually feeling our feelings. Actually feeling can be hard, uncomfortable work. So we don’t. We stay in our routine, wear the same colors again and again, think a lot about what we should/need to be doing and the catastrophe that is coming if we don’t. Instead of noticing where we are, when those feelings threaten to overwhelm we move into distraction mode. We watch TV, eat mindlessly, or play on social media and fall asleep in utter exhaustion, just to get up and start over again the next day.

We fear our feelings. And that includes the good ones, like joy and excitement. The last time you felt thrilled about something happening, didn’t you have a thought that told you not to get too happy, because it wouldn’t last? If you got too joyful, it would just hurt more when it ended or the next hard thing came. It’s as if our mind wants to keep us in a narrow range of normal and getting too happy or sad is to be avoided at all costs. The hard feelings like grief, sorrow, boredom and pain are certainly to be avoided at all costs, because if we go there we might never come up again. And then what will we do?

Truth time: A hard feeling is the worst thing that can happen to us. Stay with me – I know you just thought of about four things that are worse than a hard feeling. But whatever is happening to me is filtered through the way I see it. My perspective comes from how I think about a situation. And my feelings come from those thoughts.

 

Purple flowers I bought this week…

 

Management of my thoughts has been a concept that has come up again and again for me over the past months. When I have a subject that keeps repeating itself like this, I know I’d better pay attention. After all, it’s not my thought, just one that I need to learn from and maybe share. The scripture that keeps coming to mind is 2 Corinthians 10:5b, “and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” For years I thought this was hyperbole, just an unattainable goal. Now I’m realizing that because I decided taking every thought captive was impossible, I wasn’t even going to try. And when I started trying, I realized the depth and complexity of work that needed to be done to undo well worn thought patterns that were not obedient to Christ and did not serve me. Automated thoughts are the reason we eat without being hungry, why we feel stuck or frustrated with a new idea, why we yell at our kids when we promised ourselves we wouldn’t, and why we give up on a desire before we’ve even tried. It’s why we live in a scarcity mentality – never enough food, money, time.

 

 

Now don’t get me wrong. I know that you can’t just decide to magically think yourself out of grief or pain. That’s not true, and it’s a bad idea. Pain needs to be felt to heal, and that takes time. I’m talking about avoiding feeling the pain or grief or joy because of the thoughts you have about what will happen if you feel it. The thoughts that say if you feel really sad, you might never get out of bed again and you’ll lose your job, your family will starve and everyone will think you’re a loser. So you better not go there. Instead you live a limited life, letting the thoughts keep you from healing from your hurts and truly experiencing the beauty and joy in this life you are living.

 

Being conscious about thoughts and feelings takes some work. The good news is that doesn’t actually take more time, just a willingness to keep coming back to the present moment. It’s easier to stay automated and unplugged, but then you miss the moment. The feeling of the warm sunshine on my face while I’m sitting at my desk, the feeling of my ankles crossed under the table, the sweet mint scent of tea in the blue-green flowered mug – all good things that are easy to miss if the mind is too busy anticipating all the possible dangers ahead. I try not to get too annoyed with my mind.  After all, it’s just doing what it’s made to do; keep me out of trouble. The mind is always scanning for possible threats – your amygdala (the fear center in your brain) is responsible for that. But years of anticipating possible threats and accepting them as real allows the amygdala to get a little too good at its job. Then you live in a state of high alert, as if an emergency is constantly around the corner. This is learned thinking, and it can be unlearned with practice. Little kids don’t live like this. Think of what kids look like playing in a park. They’re not watching for child predators or worried about falling off the monkey bars. They’re just enjoying the wind in their face on the swing and the sound of the scream in their throat. Yes, we need to live in the real world and children have us to protect them. But we also don’t have to be captive to fears our minds suggest to us.

 

 

Thought and feeling work is important. There are volumes written about it, so I know I won’t do it justice in one post. But I am working on my own mind! This time I sat down to feel purple. Purple makes me feel full, rich, plentiful. It seems rare, sumptuous and spectacular. I think of purple as a color for the powerful and gentle. So why was I feeling attracted to purple? Maybe I’m feeling settled where I am, less anxious and agitated about where I’m going. Maybe listening to God is making me feel more connected to him – purple seems royal to me!. It might be that something in me feels cared and provided for, like I have enough. Who knows for sure? I do know that I feel better for having taken the time to examine my thoughts, to pay attention to myself instead of letting the constant background noise of my brain play on like a TV in the other room. I’ve never liked background noise anyway, so even better to let my brain chatter quiet down. So I’ll keep paying attention and trying to catch those thoughts. You know, Socrates said that “An unexamined life is not worth living.”  I’m certainly finding it helpful to watch my thought life more carefully!

 

How about you? Have you ever tried to capture your thoughts? Do you get distracted by the background noise in your brain? Please share in the comments below – I think we might need to take this deeper!