Emotion as energizer
Quote from Aurora, a webcomic: “Aren’t you angry?”
“Oh, sure. But anger’s a weapon. I carry it with me, but I don’t use it unless I have to. It won’t do me any good in here.”
“Anger… is a weapon?”
“Well, that’s what my teacher says, anyway. Any emotion can be a weapon. They push you to extremes you can’t normally manage. Like, if you’re scared or angry, you feel less pain and fatigue.”
“I never thought of emotions as weapons. They seem… more distracting than helpful. It’s harder to think.”
“See, that’s the trick. People think that, so they try to force themselves to feel less. An emotion is a force. If you push back against it, you’re fighting yourself, which weakens you. But if you give that force a direction, it can push you and make you that much stronger. I’m angry; I’ll never deny that. But that has nothing to do with you. I’m using it to train harder and stay sharp during the fights. I’m not going to take it out on someone who’s just as stuck as I am.”
--1.13.25, Aurora webcomic by Red, posted online August 9, 2021, at https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-13-25/, also published in a book, _Aurora_ Volume 2, page 62, copyright 2026 by Red.
I read this and thought, I’m feeling a lot of emotions. Often I stop what I’m doing to feel those emotions. Or I snack on something, or nap, or hug someone, or listen to music, or cry. It didn’t occur to me to put those emotions to work propelling me forward. They do distract me when I need to decide something—unless they’re giving me direction on what to decide.
Emotions are useful when I’m cleaning or uncluttering or washing dishes or doing something that doesn’t require a lot of decisions. I can do a lot in a fit of anger or sorrow or happiness or feeling stuck. But so much of life has to be decided on; I tend to get stuck in decision making and end up spinning my wheels, undecided, because it’s overwhelming. I often choose the first food that comes to hand, or wear the clothes on top of the pile, or even read the next book on my desk. I draw geometric art by setting a rule and simply following the rule until another decision about direction or color has to be made. And then the new direction is determined at least partly by the lines on the graph paper, and the color by whichever marker I happen to pick up.
I do some things intentionally: I read scriptures daily. I pray many times during the day; I went through a phase where my goal was to pray literally always. Knowing I would get distracted, I made it a goal to always come back to talking to God, and then listening. The result of that pattern is that I pray a lot more than I ever have before. It’s not always, but it’s much more often. And the results have been good. I’ve felt direction and comfort.
I also set rules: food must be put away, dishes scraped and put by the sink. Sticky messes get wiped up thoroughly right away, while they’re fresh. Trash goes in trash receptacles; there is one in almost every room. The trash goes out to the curb once a week. The dishes get washed, not every day, but they do get washed. And the laundry gets washed, dried, sorted, and put away—or given to the person who owns the clothing, on the theory that eventually they will either wear them or put them away. Books go on shelves. Coats go in the coat closet. The mail gets opened and thrown out immediately, unless it’s important (most of it is ads). Scheduled activities get written on the wall calendar and in my paper planner. My phone gets plugged in every night. Computers get turned off or at least put to sleep when not in use.
I don’t yet have habits for every household chore; sweeping, for instance, happens irregularly. But because of food, dish, and clothing rules, those items are not on the floor. At least, mine are not; no promises that the young man has put his socks in the laundry or his dishes in the sink.
This leaves a lot of room for emotional processing, of which I’ve been doing a ton. If emotions have weight, then I’m staggering under them. It’s a good practice to stop and feel them; for years I was going nonstop caring for children. I’ve recently made a point of analyzing what I’m feeling, because my body objects when I push it down, shove it under the rug. But to go from recognition to using emotion as motivator, energizer… my default has been to sit down with my emotions, a sort of, “there, there, I hear you.” How ??
