Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Take Heart and Let the Sadness Come

Today is Tisha B'av, a Jewish fast day dedicated to mourning the various acts that destroy holiness in the world. I learned this from the blog of composer Meira Warshauer. She and I have been friends since we were in first grade.

She writes: "Today, for a few more hours, we can feel the sadness of a world in pain. Today we don’t have to get busy fixing it. We also don’t have to turn away from things too difficult or inconvenient to face. We can live with the sorrow. We don’t eat, we don’t bathe or listen to music. We are just present with the broken-ness of our world. We feel compassion. We let our hearts break."

That takes courage. That's bold.


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Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway?

Brain research from Israel shows that what works best for taking immediate brave action is to disconnect from the fear and do it anyway.

Neuron magazine reports that people watched in an MRI machine could let a live snake closer to their heads if they "dissociated" from the feeling of fear.

"Courage is associated with dissociation of reported fear and somatic arousal." Somatic arousal being the physical agitation: pounding heart, sweat, etc.

In my view, anyone who can let a snake get near them in an MRI machine is already Batman.

But I do find the research potentially very useful to me. Essentially, it is to put the feelings aside. We've all done that, putting an emotion aside in moments when "the show must go on." So everyone knows how. Probably courage is a matter of being conscious and practiced at "not feeling the fear" though we know it's there, rather than being fearless or panicked.

(I'm currently working on putting aside the feeling of being sweat-soaked from a half hour midday walk -- by blogging and carefully placed ice cubes.)








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