Retreat: as an emotion

Narrating an incident or telling a story will not change the manner in which a person retreats. One just retreats, takes a step back. This act assures him that his emotions are safer now, he has efficiently guarded them. He can now relax in his comfortable armchair and be at peace. The chapter is closed.

But is this how emotions are actually guarded? Are we ever able to come out of those feelings? Does the fear of being hurt ever dies?

“Only a man who explores the depth of his emotions can come out of them”, very true. This further implies that a man who guards them will always find them lingering inside him. They will resurface time and again whenever you try to loose yourself even a bit. This act will naturally make you retreat again and then it becomes a non-terminating process. You are now totally engulfed by the power of retreat (an emotion) and it is swallowing your ability to “live in the emotion for the moment.”

Now the next question “should we never retreat”. The answer, ideally “YES”, practically “NO”. So where to draw the line? Who are ones we should retreat from? When should we retreat?

Let me try to reach to a conclusion.

Who do we actually retreat from? The ones we care for the most, and to be more precise are afraid of losing the most. Losing becomes important because we generally don’t retreat in front of our parents, quite possible we do not love them the most, but definitely we are sure of never losing them, so we never retreat. Definitely in cases, where you love them too much you find yourself retreating as well.

How capable are these our very own loved ones of hurting us? To a great Extent. Any action of theirs which is not in sync with our expectations hurt us. Even a burp of theirs, which we didn’t want hurts. So the idea is to communicate. But communicating emotions is very difficult. To give right words to the thoughts is a Herculean task. But we still have asymptotes.

Once the problem is conveyed, the next step is to understand or analyze the solution. You can have your buts and ifs, but discussion can probably bring it to a conclusive and more agreeable end.

Moving ahead like this will form a history of a number of cases and a repetition of a particular case a number of times and more than one particular case a number of times is where we might draw the line. Also, there can be some misaligned cases, where you have the choice. Explore and experiment what works best. Arriving at a conclusion without exploring will bring us back to where we started.

All in all, make life easier to live, more simple to understand and more convenient to tackle. “Why are you afraid of questioning, when you have nothing to loose?” So break free, loose yourself.