In my life I have seen much damage done when people have been deeply wounded by emotions  that could not be handled or words that cut and sliced the heart.

Is it for us to walk untouched but acknowledging the emotions that devastate us and continue to live our lives with no further ado?

Emotions become a burden needing to be understood before they are shrugged.  Once understood they become integrated and no longer need to be carried as excess weights.

Emotions belong to Earth life and here they are learned.  There are worlds where emotions are an unknown, where to love has to be learned and compassion is an unknown.  Where caring must be learned for those of less kind circumstances and must be attended to.

Those of us who have read the Doris Lessing’s Shikasta series or Frank Herbert’s books of Dune know intimately and identify worlds  with emotional innocence and sterility.  They are a shock to the sensitivities but even harder to live with such persons.

We cannot write a check to feed the world nor bandage its wounds, but we can walk into the mud to lift our brother up.  That to me is what emotional understanding does.

The Counselor. . .

She sat across the desk, crisp and sharp
and in charge of who she was.
Emotion is not fact, she said, so separate
what you feel from what is happening.

Then why I ask is my heart breaking?
And with composure she assures me
my heart is whole.  She does not see that my world
is built on feelings that shape my days.

I was born to paint my life
with the wide brush of emotion,  to teach me to love,
to see, to care and learn to Be.  When love
withdrew from me and left me barren,

I knew I would not forget its power to lift
me high enough to touch the heavens
and care enough for this Earth I walked
to sweep the debris where others might walk.

To see the opening of the crocus in the covering
of snow to tell of Spring arriving and of days becoming
longer with light and caressing me with breezes
as soft as baby kisses.  She did not know of worlds

where emotions were not born yet,
where facts dealt the cards to be played,
where feelings did not lay color on days and nights
and where learning to live with feelings were reasons

why we asked to be born of Earth. . . . .she did not know. . .