Emotions are weird.

I know that’s not the most intellectual sentence I’ll ever write, but I feel as though it can hardly be faulted for its truth.

On Saturday I got up, got dressed and headed off to church. The day was beautiful – filled with the brightness of a blue sky amplified only by the brilliance of the unveiled sun. After church I spent the afternoon in great company. I was content, happy even.

Eventually I went to go home. But instead of turning right towards the fastest route, I wrenched my steering wheel to the left and headed to the river. Upon arriving I unexpectedly met some friends, enjoyed a short walk and then settled down on the wharf with a notebook and a pen to absorb the sensations of sitting by the river at dusk. As I wrote, I felt slightly melancholy and wistful, but again, those feelings were nested in contentment.

I came home. I was tired, slightly hungry but I drifted around my house for a while doing odd things here and there and then in a strange moment I looked at a patch of carpet between my couch and my bookshelf, slumped to the ground and began to cry. I cried about the division in our society, I cried about how tired I was, I cried about my relationships, and I simply cried for the sake of crying.

Can I repeat it? Emotions are weird.

I can remember a time not too long ago when this sudden outburst would have confused me and distressed me even further, but no longer.

Let me explain.

I’m nearly at the end of a school term.

Lots of things are going on. Preparation for the school musical has moved into top gear. Efforts to give and complete assessment tasks are becoming frantic. Thoughts of planning for next term are beginning to peck away at the sanity. Tidying of classrooms has to be complete so that the carpet can be replaced. Amongst it all there’s the continual trying to maintain some structure and routine so our students have some sense of normalcy to exist within so they don’t go crazy also. And like everyone else, the demands of day to day work life are balanced against all the other facets of life – maybe faith, or relationships, or hopes and dreams and plans for the future.

Of course, when lots of things begin to pile up things tend to fray. The nights get later, the snooze button gets more love, patience wears thin, health choices become poor, hormones want to play, the house starts to get messy, and thoughts and feelings that little bothered me before become giant mountains of doom – demanding my mind’s attention, clambering to be heard, poking holes in the government that allows my rational mind to preside over my irrational mind.

What I have slowly come to accept is that, naturally, in these times, emotions run high. All the emotions. The good, the bad. They all fight for their place in the spotlight. And their little war sometimes manifests in day or a week, maybe even a month of emotional highs and lows. From laughing hysterically at videos of cats being scared, to tearing up over a story of someone getting a surprise puppy, to sobbing on the floor wondering why the world seems to be imploding.

So, what have I come to know?

This is a normal experience.

And for these times, I have taught myself a simple phrase:

This too shall pass.

It’s one of the hardest truths to believe, but when you’re collapsed on the floor in the foetal position, sometimes it’s the only thing you have to hold on to. They are the words I’ve found that allow you to exist in the darkness of a moment of despair, yet each word pricks the darkness, creating pinholes of light from the world outside the gloom.

Emotions, I think, will always persist to be ‘weird’. They are an essential part of our human make-up, conversing and responding to everything that goes on around us. They will, occasionally, be heightened at the most inconvenient times, arguing and shouting through the clamour of life. But in those moments when the walls fall down and you are completely overcome, allow yourself to be human, allow yourself to breath, to cry, to grit your teeth and to say:

This too shall pass.