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As a therapist, I feel good about feelings.  When it comes to serenity, connection, and success, emotional intelligence counts as much as cognitive intelligence.  Most of us experience similar feelings about similar things, with similar intensity.  We differ concerning our skill at accessing, affirming, and processing our feelings.  These skills allow us not only to acknowledge our emotions, but to integrate them into our thoughts and actions in a constructive way.  It is generally only the feelings we disavow which  sabotage us.  Except that there’s an exception to everything! I have found that one important exception involves envy. Envy is the conviction that others have possessions or attributes that we don’t, and feeling intense desire for what others have and resentment over what we don’t have.  Envy is difficult to process, impossible to reason with, and very stubborn.  Envy is malignant, and when given an inch always takes a mile.  In my experience, the only real option for dealing with envy is to stomp it out.  So it doesn’t consume us, we must stamp out feelings of envy as vigorously and immediately as we would a match dropped on the carpet.  We can always find someone with more than we have; and we can also always find someone with less.  Maybe it should be said that he who worries about who has the most toys never wins.

Losing someone we love is something we dread.  Even if the loss is a pet, a job, a relocation, or a stage of life, the longing and the emptiness that follows is truly a forbidding experience.  And when the loss involves a beloved person, our suffering can feel beyond words, beyond endurance, and beyond hope.  Whether we were estranged from the one we’ve lost, or present to the end to attend their every need, grief and guilt go hand in hand with dreadful regularity.  Because there are neither perfect people nor perfect relationships, the guilt is generally misplaced, but it seems to haunt us nonetheless. While it used to be thought there were stages to the grieving process, it is in fact the randomness of grief that is one of its more difficult aspects.  Grief is prone to surprise attacks, and we never know when a place, a sound, or an object will plunge us into the depths of despair and anguish.  It is at these times that just attending to the basics of our lives is an act of courage, and should be seen and experienced as such.  During those times it takes resolve to hang on or to keep on, despite misbegotten advice to move on.  If grief is a journey, over time the path does tend to smooth out, but there are no universal road maps, nor necessarily an end point. We need to respect the terrible significance of grief.  And we need to relate to a grieving person, whether it be ourselves or another, with the utmost gentleness and care.  Those who are grieving have much to teach us about love.