Scrapped Emotions

One of my closest friend and I recently took a floral arrangement class. We hunched over a studio table, picking, choosing, and plucking at our chosen flowers. We had liberty with the palette of our colours, textures, sizes, scents. A pool of peonies and soft-hued tea roses stood in vases above monotonous green clippings. We stayed after the class left to trash the clippings or rather, as I bagged the treasure they called trash. 

A month following this class, my friend and I had a de cœur-à-cœur, as I'd like to call it, speaking from our hearts of what has been brewing in our already boiled minds. I sense that the heart of a handful if not many droop down into an abyss and we come to navigate our world solely with our mind. We were both in this space. We were in what felt like a monotony of daily movement from bed to work to bed. A grown-up version of eat, poop, sleep—a routine derived of the senses beyond the necessary. 

Days becoming a hush of the copy machine, indecipherable static metro announcements, and sheets stirred in blue nights. Sad desk lunches pale to the taste but we eat anyway. Sharp fingers touching tender bodies magnified under our cruel eyes in front of a mirror—the bulge of this, the bone of that. A pang of guilt in the stereotypic realisation of children starving globally or the pained glance of someone less fortunate on a walk to work.

We run like hamsters—with some rest—in a wheel of negative feelings which we then roll into more negative feelings for the mere act of feeling them. Seeing that we are in a rut, we try to run away from it by either ignoring our dismal state or judging it. We scrap our low emotions, deeming them as useless. 

This week, may we acknowledge the entirety of our emotions. May we feel them, nurture them all. May we not speak of them in a conditional "should" or "should not"—may we feel the sadness when we feel it. May we realise that our emotions are not a treasure trove to take through for the gold or flower whose petals we pluck at in a game of (s)he loves me/(s)he loves me not. We get the pretty petal sometimes and the dried up one with a moldy stem in others. May we face all emotions that are stirred up, may we run towards them, and may we be able to tread onwards with a lighter baggage that we all carry . . .