On writing and Emotions

We are at liberty on what to share and not share. In the world we live in today, there are so many things that would annoy us, and force us to say things which are inappropriate.One way, I restrain myself is by writing my reactions and keeping them private until such a time when the emotions have cooled off.

Most of the time however, we rarely have the time to cool off. For example a conversation with a friend about a rather controversial issues, figures and ideas. These kind of conversation and, often some of them are designed to elicit certain response from us to embrasse us. These moments we are presented with information that would make us say "What"

In one classic case in the Somali political environment is the response of a senior leader and expression of his frustration with people whom he thought were good friend, only to learn the next day that very conversation was shared widely in the social media circle. This senior leader was invited by individuals who sounded supportive of his own frustration and given him the platform to share such frustration. Like most of us, he came out incoherent, and stupid.

We all need space to vent out our emotional response to events, politics and things. However, we need to be conscious of our surrounding and the people who appear to be our most trusted friends. Often, it is those trusted friends who are ready to trade your bad emotional response for something small like political appointments or in exchange for little sum of money.

In this overconnected world, facts are distorted. Stories are modified and photos photoshoot to create an illusion far removed from the truth. One many individuals have lost lucrative opportunities for talking ill about their own bosses, and the places where they work. Exercise self-restraint requires proper training, and conscious decisions to channel such negative vibes into a safe outlet where its existence and none-existence wont be discovered.

Like everyone else, I am student of emotional intelligence, trying to learn how to control such strong impulses to say things that would come to haunt us. It is those experience of feeling bad about our own failure which can help us become better prepared the next time we decide to channel our negative feelings to well-tried and tested outlet. Failure is leaning opportunity only when recognize it, and use as yardstick in our future emotional reactions.

Mine is writing. Writing and journaling about my feelings turns those negative responses to creative venue to perfect my writing and converse with myself in a way that is not possible in the present of many other louder voices. Writing in slow mode and with conscious feelings of every words coming down in the keyboard often turns my sombre feeling to a beautiful smile, my crippling self doubt into sense of optimism and good feelings. After writing about couple hundred words, or thousands in good days, I get my emotional balance in the right place.

Try writing. Start simply by expressing your personal frustration with the people around you. Do not worry about how coherent or incoherent your sentences appear. If writing is not your way, just keep audio recording of your reactions. I remember once writing about someone interesting and out of place when a friend told me " You cannot do this or that. Become this or that". Instead of focusing on the friend's statements, I wrote resilience nature of human spermatozoa. Another time, I wondered " If minnesotans hundreds ago without the benefits of cars, and heat survived, then I could"

Sorry, I could not stop writing and talking to you about my personal reactions today about this issue. As you can tell from this post, I love talking to you all , and as your friend find joy in the process. Hope my weird writing makes sense in your life