Emotional radius

I thought I'd had a lot of epiphanies recently and life would get better, but I'm still mourning when bad things happen, or I can't handle the challenges in my relationships."

A friend who is practicing exclaimed to me, "I so want to speed up again, learn more skills, and grow more."

"So, the growth you imagine is more experiencing peace and joy and being more comfortable in situations?" I asked rhetorically."Doesn't it?"

I was reminded of my Dutch friend Martin, whose profession was to take children around in nature. He once told me.

"If you don't take your child in every direction, then in their world, either 'south by southwest' will never exist as a direction, or 'south by southwest' will be off-limits."

Recently, he and his wife had some relationship problems and he fell into a depression.He doesn't shy away from displaying his grief in front of his children.He said he was slumped on the couch that day, his knees curled up. Not much later, he noticed that his youngest daughter, 8-year-old Mina, was also lying in the bedroom in the exact same position.Curiosity and mimicry are the way children are first introduced to the world.

Mina, lying helplessly, asked Martin, "Daddy, are you sad?"

"Yeah," Martin answered honestly, "Dad's upset."

"Did you have a fight with mom?" Kids certainly aren't stupid.

"Well. Mom and Dad still love each other, but they still fight. It still hurts when they fight na."

"So do you guys get divorced?" There was fear in Mina's voice.

"Baby, are you afraid Mommy and Daddy will be separated and you can't leave either one behind?"

"Well."

"Daddy's scared too. But I'm not afraid to promise you that we won't be apart. What the future holds, Daddy doesn't know."

Martin's conversation with Mina struck a chord with me.The way he teaches his children is to try to take them in all directions, southeast and northwest.He's not just talking about exploring around in nature, but also all sides of the emotional spectrum.

When he opened up to Mina about the sadness, the fear and the "not knowing," her emotional radius widened.Perhaps in the depths of her soul, in the south-southwest, a new soil has emerged.

There was a dense fog, not just the candy colors of the past.I guess, with her dad to explore with her, there might be treasure in the mists, too.

And that far north-northeast side is about to appear in their view due to the stretching of the emotional radius.

Epilogue:

After writing this, I'm a little worried that it might be misinterpreted as "the bigger the emotional radius, the better", but then what's the difference between that and just pursuing "positive emotions"?

I've been experiencing more "smaller emotional radius" moments lately, and it's easy to get angry and push away the anxieties and fears that visit me so often.

It's precisely this "smallness" that gives me a chance to breathe in the mundane, without always asking myself to lean into what a wise person "should" be.

Just like breathing, one breath, one relaxation, the radius of emotion is also radiating its vitality in the change.