A rare art form that allows you to express complex emotions

Why do people act weak and petty?

Simple. Because they lack healthier ways of managing their emotions. They are not mature adults who know how to process their feelings in constructive ways.

This is not a judgment on people’s actions. Everybody acts weak and petty some percentage of the time. Humans are imperfect creatures. None of us are so sophisticated that we act like mature adults all day, every day.

I personally can get sarcastic, passive aggressive, condescending and contemptuous. I’m not proud of this behavior, but sometimes the petulant child inside of me tells the mature adult inside of me to go screw himself. And then my friends, relatives, coworkers and strangers have to suffer through my weak and petty behavior.

Blech. I gross myself out sometimes.

But it’s amazing to me how often I will create songs that force me to confront feelings I have been avoiding. Music is a rare art form that allows you to express a lot of complex emotions and experiences in a nonverbal manner. Which is critical, considering so many of our feeling can’t be put into words. Music enables symbolic language, metaphor, colors and shapes that truly burrow through our walls into the subconscious to facilitate deeper understanding. Songs externalize or internal experiences to make our emotions and fears more tangible. By giving our feelings a safe, contained, visible form, we can gain a sense of control and distance, making it easier to explore and process difficult experiences.

Rubin encapsulates this principle in his book on creativity when he says:

It may not be possible to know who you are without somehow expressing it.

That’s maybe the best tool I have heard for not acting petty and weak. The more you make out in the world, the more sense you make inside yourself.

Do you have a way to express a lot of complex experiences in a nonverbal manner? Are you giving yourself clues to underlying feelings that may not be immediately apparent?

Ain’t nothing weak or petty about that. Processing difficult emotions in constructive ways is exactly what mature adults do.

What feeling does your culture say you’re not allowed to feel?