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What Negative Emotions Teach Us About Love
A friend was telling me about a specific regret she has regarding a family member. It surfaces now and then, and when it does, it loops through her head all day. She knows it’s not “healthy” to dwell on that regret, since there’s nothing that can be done about it now, but she can’t help it. I said to her, “Don’t beat yourself up so much for looping. After all, under so many of our ‘negative’ emotions — anger, worry, sadness, fear, resentment — lies love.” At the heart of her regret was love for the person she was missing.
I started applying this realization to many of the emotions I have been experiencing lately. It was no surprise that underneath so much of my fear and worry was love. That was pretty obvious. But the disillusionment I’ve felt lately with the publishing industry is also coming from a place of love. My love for an industry and an art I feel is so essential that it hurts to see the system so broken. My own feelings of unworthiness lately have stemmed from a story I told myself long ago about what makes us worthy. I had to learn to love myself again, whether I was living up to that manufactured ideal or not.
I’ve never been much of a grudge-holder, but a few months ago, I decided to give it a try. I felt cast aside by someone I loved, so I decided to believe they didn’t matter. I tried to stop caring about them in the same way I…
