Pew Pew Feelings š«āØ
āI want to make art that is not copied but is originalā was one of the top 3 reasons that folks shared when I asked them about their intent to join my art journaling course.
Often to their surprise in the very first session, Iād get them to create art out of nowhere! No Pinterest, no reference, no saved Instagram post or reel, just art, straight from the heart. And the secret ingredient would always be in front of their eyes, quite literally.
I often speak about this with rather great passion as to how humans are multi-sensory learners. One may have only seen 5 trees in person, but via books, stories, photos, movies, and the bazillion ways in which we experience the world, we have collected so many tiny details and nuances about trees, that when it comes to using it as a metaphor, everyone can go in immense detail- because almost always, we are observing, connecting and making meaning of things in our heads.
speaking of āobservingā a lot of my leisure time off-late has been about binge-watching a classic sitcom series: HIMYM or for the uninitiated ones, How I Met Your Mother!
4 weeks, 2.5 seasons, and 57 episodes later, last Wednesday in my therapy I ended up using a metaphor that I had unconsciously picked up and detailed from the show.
You guessed it! LASER TAG- Barney loves going to & taking people to laser tag. P.S. Iāll not give any more spoilers, I promise.
On sharing something rather heavy with her, my therapist suggested that I sit with this feeling after our session. And I laughed and said
āYou know I canāt sit with my feelings!
I can however play laser tag with them.ā
While we laughed at it for a minute, very soon, I was deep into the metaphor, expanding and detailing it to make sense of these feelings.
Over time I have started appreciating that different analogies & metaphors have different percentages of accuracy, I knew this one had a little more and I had all intentions to savor it.
The next 15 minutes were so fun and exhilarating that I can only remember some distributed quotes from it. I think this is how I went:
āif I donāt get them first, therāre gonna get meā
āsometimes it feels nice to have a team member to go back to back withā
āI think there are some feelings which are on my team and some that are my opponentsā
ābut itās all so confusing that sometimes there are casualties because of friendly fireā
āI feel empathy is one feeling that seems to be in my team, but always ends up shooting me in friendly fireā
ā¦and somewhere on that last line, we knew what we had to discuss in our upcoming sessions.
Sessions like these leave me with such a wide smile and gloating with pride, for my heart knows how much I enjoy a well-fitting metaphor. The joy & the rush got me to pick up my iPad right after the session & bring this visual to life.
If this made any sense to you or perhaps nudged you to consciously or unconsciously feel your feelings- ššš drop a comment and share the activity metaphor that comes to your mind when thinking of feeling your feelings.
love & light
molabocha āØ