Stripper Envy
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"When are we gonna to learn about emotions?" a student asked.
The class of 220 college students sat in an old auditorium, half already on their phones.
The eccentric professor, with her mismatched socks and peculiar hat, sighed.
"We don't cover that, my dear, until week seven. And unfortunately all our textbook covers related to emotions is a definition of the primary emotions and five most common sub-emotions. So absolutely nothing useful.
"I suppose I could rant about them for five minutes though. By a show of hands, who would like to hear an old woman rant about emotions?"
Most of the girls, and a dozen or so guys raised their hands.
"Ok, that's a little less than half, and I'll assume that another percentage has already checked out for the day. Their votes don't count."
Several heads slowly lifted, afraid that they were being watched.
"Let's go for it," the professor said.
"Learning the language of the heart
Is like learning to write.
First you observe.
Then you try to express what you see.
Your words are few at first.
Happy, good. Angry, bad.
Love, good. Sad, bad.
Pretty quickly you discover
You don't have names for all that you feel.
But then you realize that many of your favorite authors
Don't use any fancy words.
They just pay really close attention to the details.
And use words that everyone understands.
So you see how far your few words can take you.
You find that when you're happy your breath is longer and you feel something nice in your chest and you want to smile.
When you're angry your cheeks and chest get hot.
When you're around someone you love you feel something pulling from the center of your heart towards the other person.
And when you're sad everything becomes dull and you feel like your body is closing in on itself.
An 'emotion' is nothing but a name we give a complex combination of sensations in our bodies. The more you look, the more you see.
Next you might notice subtler things going on inside of you that you don't have words for. You discover things like anxiety, dread and panic. Different forms of sadness like grief and regret. And different manifestations of happiness like enthusiasm, contentment, and gratitude.
You start to notice that certain feelings go together, like fear and anger. And that certain feelings hide others. Maybe your friend just got a great new job stripping and your initial reaction is that you judge her and think she's a slut or something."
The few remaining guys that were still distracted were now quite interested in hearing the rest of what she head to say.
"We can say stripping and slut right?" Many heads shook up and down.
"No one's offended by those words?" Many heads shook side to side.
"Ok good. So after a day or so you look into your heart and you see your judgment and even anger towards her. You feel something twisting in your solar plexus area. It's like there's something in there that wants to get out. You don't really wanna see it, but you keep looking. You think you know what you're going to find now. And yes, there it is. Envy. You're envious she's making money while you're still in college with no idea what you want to do when you graduate. You're envious that she has a job where she's validated for how she looks while you are constantly insecure about yours. And as you're feeling shitty about yourself for being an envious person, you still keep an eye out for what's going on in there. For how things are shifting. And then you see something that makes you curious.
"It makes you breathe more deeply.”
"At the bottom of all that judgment and anger, under all that envy... you find desire.”
"'I'm not a bad person,' you think to yourself, 'I just want a better job! I just want to take care of myself so I feel sexy! I can be happy for her getting that job while knowing I also want a better job and to treat my own body better.'"
There were some laughs and many smiles amongst the crowd as people looked around at each other.
"But professor," a young girl blurted out, "How do you talk about this stuff? I think I know when I feel sad, but most of the time I don't know what to say."
The professor looked at her and smiled. She said, "Start with that. I feel sad, and I don't really know what to say. That will get you quite far."
"We rarely know what to say and in what order.
"But as you're learning how to do this, you might realize that many of your favorite authors have almost no idea what they're going to write about when they start writing your favorite books.
"They just put words on pages, and reread what they wrote. And they change things that don't make sense. And they change things when they discover something deeper or funnier or scarier.
"And that blows your mind. So you try it out.
"You might say, 'It feels like I'm this.' And as it comes out of your mouth you feel that that's not really true. So you try other words until it feels true.
"But professor, how do we know what things are appropriate to share?" a nerdy guy in the second row asked, his face red as he spoke. "There are some things I feel like are just too personal."
"Well consider that many of your favorite writers are your favorite precisely for the things they talk about that no one else is willing to."
"'Wow,' you think, 'she put into words something I've been feeling but could never say!'"
"Ok that's enough of my rambling. Pull out your books to page 96: Chemicals and Neurotransmitters Involved in Common Pathologies."