The Art of Emotional Health: Saturday, January 30, 2010
One of the things I’ve been working on … you know, one of my side projects (with all the spare time I have these days), is designing a database to capture and track the flow (ebb and tide, rise and fall), of emotional changes during an on-going bout with a cancer like I have.
My interest in this has become intense over the last several weeks because I really believe this is something a person cannot see on their own, and because of that, it’s almost impossible to work on, or improve your emotion health … or for that matter, simply understanding it.
Your emotional well being at a time when something like cancer strikes, is as important as the treatment the doctors are giving you … I believe that. But it’s hard to track what’s going on over a period of time without the ability to look back and see how things are changing.
By mining the data that’s recorded in the database, patterns can appear that are effecting your emotional well being without you ever realizing it. Sleep patterns, depression patterns, stress, can all be seen in a graph. Laid out so you can see what days and times certain emotions are running high, is an important factor in trying to control and understand how your feeling during cancer.
Although I’m not a big believer in the positive attitude thing (a positive attitude will heal you), I am a big believer in having the knowledge and understanding about where things stand and what areas I could improve upon, leading me to a better life quality. The idea of avoiding a stressful thing for example, could lead me to a better day in general … and that’s what I’m looking for.
For example, if I were to find that every Tuesday afternoon was a stressful time for me, it’s gives me something to investigate and hopefully work on reducing that stress.
In a real-life case, I found that one of my medicines worked much, much better, if I took it an hour or more earlier then I had been. The medicine was effecting my appetite in a way that interfered with my family’s meal time. The time I was taking the medicine and the time that we had always had dinner, were in conflict with each other.
Every time I sat down to eat dinner, even if I had just cooked it myself, I just couldn’t eat. If I waited an hour or so longer, my appetite returned. But this effected the rest of the family. Seeing this pattern, helped me adjust a lot of stress out of our household. Being ill is no fun for anyone including your loved ones around you … so any adjustments you can make that can help that, is good for the entire household and your health as well.
The program has a purpose, and a powerful one at that. In the near future I will be revealing parts of this program for you see how it works in real life. The key here is “ask the right questions and you’ll get the right answers” …. More to come about this.
So why did I name this post “The Art of Emotional Health”? Well, besides tracking our emotional health in a database, there are others ways of adjusting and helping our emotional health that have nothing to do with databases, computers or writing software, or anything of that nature.
A friend sent me some recent photos of abstract paintings that I thought I’d share with you. As in looking at any piece of art, and especially abstract art, the artist’s meaning is often not known. Abstract art can be seen by a thousand people and have a thousand interpretations. So we have to say, that the artist’s intent, is as real as is commonly accepted, even if we can’t see or feel it.
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What does that mean? It means, that if you can’t see or feel an emotion or intent from the painting, then it is you that is weak, and not the artist. You need to use your imagination to “feel” the art. We have no idea what message he or she was trying to convey at the time of the painting, we need to add our own ”intent” to the art.
What does it mean to me? You have to do the same for you when looking at abstract art. I even gave them my own names and a short review. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did and continue to.
Painting One: The Cardinal
My initial glance at this gave me the feeling of a Spring cardinal (you know those little red birds). Just simply because of the angle at which the red was applied to the canvas.
Then, under closer examination of the entire painting I realized there was so much more to it, but that I was on the right track. The heavily stroked grey center told me that a storm was about to move in, the swirling of the grey strokes just screamed out turbulence in weather.
Looking at the background colors and the division of those two colors, I saw that the left-hand side was Spring time moving in, with it’s warmth and brightness. The right-hand side was winter, being literally pushed off the canvas by the grey storm clouds. I love this painting. The mottled tones of the background and the bright red are in such contrast, as though nature was fighting to solve it’s own problems, balance itself out. Like the ying and the yang … so powerful indeed. Balance, with Springtime winning out!
Painting Two: New Growth
This painting caught my eye immediately after looking at “The Cardinal” and I couldn’t help seeing the Springtime here too … maybe this was a series of paintings on a theme? The “End of Winter” possibly. Lighter on top, and darker on the bottom tells me that New Growth is about to rise from the ground and the darker underbrush is about to be replaced by Springs wonderful warmth that allows all things to grow. I am more and more convinced that this is a series of “winter’s end, and spring beginning” of paintings.
Painting Three: And The Two Shall Meet
This last painting just floored me. All this rolled into one scene was just the right emotion to show here. I see that “The Cardinal” character is back, standing next to “New Growth” (you can see them both standing in the background), as they leave from the depths of Mother Earth with it’s fiery volcanoes and unknown darkness, bringing us, or giving birth to the light and sunshine of a new Spring and Summer season. Life goes on here … and the continuation of the world is confirmed by the artist … just fantastic!
Now that I’ve showed you these paintings, reviewed them, and expressed the emotional content they drew out of me … I love these paintings, and I’d like you, to interpret them in your own way. They are abstract and can have many meanings and messages … this is what I saw, and I felt.
Emotions, whether in a database, on piece of paper or whatever, need to be dealt with, but you need to have the data or information behind them, in order to understand and deal with them on the proper level. Understanding where it comes from is half the battle … understanding why you’re emotional or why your emotions rise and fall is all part of watching what can happen when circumstances change in your life.
So now I’ll tell you that these paintings were done by my friend, five year old Alex Hansson in Uppsala, Sweden … and aren’t they just fabulous!
Can you see what I see?
Can you see at all?
Thank you Alex, thank you for your painting, and for your emotional uplifting.
Aren’t kids the best!
