I Second That Emotion

I Second That Emotion

John Paul Derryberry

Play a 60s Motown song and I can't help but think of my father. Maybe it's the strength of the last tangible memory of riding around in my car with my dad, listening to The Temptations. Even though there's a hint of sadness around that memory, that era of music always brings happiness into my world. You play the Frightened Rabbits' song, Backward Walk, and it will pull a sense of sadness into my world. I discovered that song at a particularly lonely time in my middle twenties. It's very much a comforting sadness when I hear it now, almost to remind me to appreciate everything I've got now.

After my wife finishes reading my blog every week, I get a one to two-sentence critique. I enjoy her comments on my blogs, good, bad, or indifferent. She knows me the best out of everyone and has a good pulse on how I'm doing. Oftentimes she points out when I'm upset before I even realize I'm at that point. For example, she finished last week's blog and said, " good, honest, to the point, but lacked the emotion I love in your writing."

I went back and reread the blog, and well, she was correct. It was a finely-worded take on how we all seemingly retreat to our corners of the world. We hope for a single solution to a complicated problem. What is missing is the emotion behind why we retreat to our corners and plug our ears. Basically, we scream at each other like toddlers saying, "I'm not listening," over and over and over again. It's fear. We are bombarded with fear, and that emotion causes us to make stupid, unhealthy emotional decisions all the time.

This is why I advocate, and why every story I tell revolves around emotions so much. They affect us even when we deny them. They are always part of our decision-making process, no matter who we are. They are contagious; happy people make people around them happier. Anger, as we are witnessing in our culture, spreads like wildfire through our communities. Until we understand our own emotional reactions, it's hard to move through life. Even this storyteller lets sadness run his life every once in a while, and while I have no real reason to currently be sad.

Last week's blog will be the last emotionless blog I ever write. It's not what this space is about, it's not what I'm about, and it's certainly not what I want my readers to find when they come here. However, emotions are a part of our human experience, and I always worry about folks who attempt to take emotions out of the equation because that is impossible. Emotions can be many things: uplifting, heavy, wrong, right, fleeting, or deeply rooted. Still, they are always part of the equation and must always be a part of the stories I tell.