I’ve been talking to Lou about feelings lately. And how they are kind of like a math equation. You have a bad feeling or a bad moment, well that’s like a negative sign or subtraction. You’ve taken something away. And you need to add something to make it positive again. So you have to find a way to do or feel something positive. And then when you put them together you either come out even, neutral, zero or you end up with more than you had before. You’re no longer in the negative.
Let’s take this morning, for example. I had no patience. I kept getting frustrated with the kids. That was a negative. I felt depleted. Like something had been taken away. And I ruminated on what a bad mom I was for most of the day. But then Julian got home from school and we were all together and I felt happy and energetic. I was playful and patient. That was a plus. I added that to the minus from the morning and things were positive again. I no longer felt depleted.
Every day is full of ups and downs, twists and turns of emotions and moment that are both bad and good, positive and negative. Emotions are messy and hard and not always easy to control. It’s hard to say I need to fix this. It’s hard to understand emotions because they are complex and murky and sometimes spring up out of nowhere. And that can feel overwhelming.
But if we think about emotions like a math equation we can break them down into manageable parts and create equations for moving them from positive to negative or maybe even just to neutral. Neutral can be good too. When you have a negative you can just add a positive. A smile. A joke. A hug. A drawing. A dance. A shared moment building legos. Laughing at the cats. Reading a book. And just that little bit of positive can take the equation from bad to good.
Emotions are layered and complex, but it’s all math after all.
