As an actor, I am familiar with emotional manipulation. I trick myself, using my imagination and my technique, into genuinely feeling the emotions of dramatic characters. This emotion is most natural when it is the result of pursuing a character’s goals, rather than being it’s own entity as an affected state.
Such a state can also be called a mood. And as my old acting teacher always said, “Mood spelled backwards is doom.”
I have to work on this. Because regardless of my acting, I on occasion find myself applying the same muscle memory for replicating emotions during seasons when I believe I should feel a certain way.
Generally these times fall around holidays and big events like birthdays and the start of school each fall. My subconscious recalls certain inner atmospheres from years prior and quietly demands that they continue to be felt during their allotted dates. Else it’s not the Fourth of July. Else it’s not Christmas. Else it’s not my birthday. Else it’s not Easter.
Thus I go about, mustering, manifesting, manipulating emotions when the truth is, no matter how hard I try, those sensations will never be felt unless I do the things that produced them.
I can’t just put on a hat titled “How Easter feels,” but I can spend time reading the Bible, actually having a conversation with God and realizing it has been too long, attending church with those I love, eating a meal with friends and family, laughing at old jokes and new silliness and thanking God for life in all its intricacies.
These doings, these actions, produce the sensations of discernment, peace, togetherness, love, hope, joy, passion, etc. But the sensations themselves are only by-products. To go after them on their own is foolish because they will not come. They cannot come. They belong to Process who gives them as a gift. I am an actor. I should know this. “Mood” spells “doom” backwards, I get it. So why don’t I get it?
I think it’s because I, like many other Americans, am wired to value feelings to an increasingly dangerous degree. A situation “feeling like” it should is not wrong. We experience a delightful sense of puzzle pieces fitting together when we identify that a season feels as we individually think it should. The danger is when we begin to value the sensation over its source.
And if the sources are such treasures as God, friends and family, who are we to want their benefits without the effort of getting to know them?
Whatever sensations arise in the next week, let’s take them as they come and use our feelings as a guideline by which to check our doings. And if our doings are not in line, then let’s get our homework done, clean our rooms, help our neighbors, hang out with our friends, do our laundry, call our parents, apologize to those we’ve hurt, admit our stubbornness and even pray.
I have a feeling that then our feelings will feel just as they should feel. And if they don’t, oh well. At least we won’t be judging the authenticity of life by something as transient as emotion.
Lydia is a senior majoring in theatre studies and Spanish.