Gratitude is for Building

Lately I’ve been feeling gratitude for my ability to write even when I don’t feel like it. More specifically, I feel gratitude that my emotions don’t rule me on writing. 

I’m no stranger to feeling powerless to feeling itself. We know we want to do a thing, but a feeling stops us from doing a thing. We know we want to stop doing a thing, but a feeling drives us forward anyway. It’s debilitating. I’ve been a professional writer for the past 15 years, but for the past couple, when I haven’t felt inspired, when I’ve felt blocked, it’s been painful to try to force writing. Lately that experience has lifted. I don’t feel inspired to write right now, but I’m writing. And more than feeling grateful that I can write, I feel grateful that I get to choose what I do regardless of how I feel in the moment. There’s a higher feeling driving me. More intuitive. A knowing. And every time I take a moment for gratitude about this, that higher feeling grows a little stronger. 

Last week I wrote about how rage destroys things. My point was that working with rage is important, and, we need to know what lane it rides. Rage is not a builder. When we try to build with it, we just build in its image, multiplying it. We build more pain. More rage. More destructive systems and relationships. 

Destruction isn’t automatically bad. Sometimes we need to destroy things. That’s okay and that’s life. What I’m saying is it helps to be conscious of when you’re destroying and when you’re building, so you can do so intentionally. People build oppressive systems because they built with fearful, dehumanizing energy. We build insecure relationships when we cultivate them with insecure energy. The energy we build with shapes the outcome and nature of what we build, including the outcome of our personal lives. And this energy I’m speaking of ultimately comes from our feelings.

We can’t control how we feel but we do get to shape our relationship with them. We can cultivate different rhythms and patterns and responses to our feelings. Or, we can do nothing intentionally and let whatever happens happen. I don’t recommend the latter. Not being intentional about your relationship with their feelings is how people get addicted to their rage and their fear and their insecurity without even realizing it. Then they build and destroy everything with these energies, cultivating more of the same. 

This is especially true in vulnerable and transformative times. Like how we go to therapy and coaching and learn how to feel our feelings. We process what we’ve been suppressing, and of course most of what’s suppressed is pain. We learn how much we’ve neglected these feelings and refuse to do it again, but we take it too far. Instead of just being with the feelings and developing a relationship to them, we let the feelings become us.

I stopped being able to write at will when I got rageful about capitalism. I deconstructed my relationship to it and made associations I wish I hadn’t. I never meant to harm this thing I love about myself and my way of life. 

But that’s what happens. Rage is a wildfire. When destructive feelings like rage take over and we don’t pay close enough attention, they start driving us to destroy a bunch of things in our lives and communities that we don’t actually intend to destroy. A lot of things we needed to destroy go, sure. But other things we wish we’d kept go too. These seasons can last years and ultimately they don’t end until we end them. 

So it’s important to understand that the point of healing was never to become ruled by your emotions. 

We aren’t done with our healing work until we put an end to this season. Stop being ruled by your emotions and start being in relationship with them. Find your way back to center so you can be informed by your challenging emotions and continue to build intentionally toward the feelings you want to cultivate more of.

We want lives we feel grateful for. But fear doesn’t cultivate gratitude. Insecurity doesn’t cultivate gratitude. Hatred and rage do not cultivate gratitude. If you want a life, an experience, relationships, careers, you feel grateful for, you’ll have to cultivate them with the flavors you wish to taste in them. You’ll have to inject gratitude intentionally and multiply the things you love that way.

So yes, know your feelings. Even the challenging ones. Process them and honor them and let them inform you. Let them tell you where to destroy a thing, and clear some space. That’s fine.

But do not let them rule you completely. Do not let them destroy everything. And never forget that gratitude is for building.

Rooting for You, 

Tori