Fear has become the ruler of the land whether it’s recognised or not. Fear is expressed in a myriad of ways but it’s most recognisable as anger. Some people are angry because their fight or flight response is fight, some respond with anger from the pressure felt because of pent up energy from confinement of their life, choices, and movement, some don’t know why they are angry, but they are and it’s explosive and it keeps seeping out with regularity.  

Anger is an emotion just like happiness, measuring one against the other as with love and hate provides some perspective. It can be helpful to ask when feeling a strong emotion – why do I feel this way? A precise answer is not the point of questioning, the point is to consider the self. No matter what or who or where we are on the journey through life these times are testing us in ways that we may not perceive. There is no measure for the external experience being thrust upon us, but we all do have an internal measure of ourselves even if it’s not a familiar tool.

Not many people like to think of themselves as emotional; to be in touch with your emotions to the point where you can sit with them, experience them, let them out before others and own them is seen as weakness. Beyond thought emotion is all that we are – happiness is the prime ambition in life for the majority and happiness is an emotion.

Think about it. If you’re not responding with thought, then you are having an emotional response to the world. When there is no real information to process with thoughts then all that is available to us is an emotional state of being.

The true rulers of our lives are our minds and our emotions tangled together. If they can be embraced, then something familiar may gain a place in the world again.

Focussing on what is beyond my control has become a touchstone for a state of powerlessness that captures observations which stick with me as criticisms I don’t intend to make. We are all powerless right now. We are all lost or deluded or confused or any combination of emotions that hinge on uncertainty. Making plans has become laughable – literally; people make jokes in conversation about not being able to plan more than a day ahead at a time.

For me life has become challenging with focus placed on chronicling and making sense of the world. A shift to sort out the mess that this creates within has been at the forefront of my mind and the only path that seems clear is going within mindfully and creatively – turning away from all that disempowers to embrace what empowers. This is not an attempt to exist in a state of denial, the problems of the world will remain large, undeniable and beyond my control, but it is the fact that they are beyond my control that causes me to get real and turn away from what I cannot affect.

Focus and energy and peace of mind are finite things, they must be cultivated mindfully for wellbeing, this though requires established habits or steady ground. Creating a routine which doesn’t include rabbit holes or anxiety or masked emotions in the face of this adversity is difficult. We are not rabbits, a sense of purpose is our natural right not a state of anxiety, and masks shouldn’t be necessary for us to connect.