When we look at our “emotional map” we can see that the emotions we feel frequently, that are familiar to us, even if we don’t like them sometimes, is like a “map” of our emotional world.

If you are the kind of person that gets angry regularly, that tells you much about you. If you are often sad or melancholy, same thing. If you are basically a happy person, same thing.

However, often one emotion “masks” another, so we might walk around appearing, even believing, we are happy for example, but it might be hiding a deep sadness.

Clowns know this. Any truly great comedy has a tragedy at its root. Laugh or cry, those are our two choices when faced with life. Clowns get us to laugh about the pain in our lives. Look at Jim Carey’s movies, for example: The Truman Show. It is very funny, but the story is tragic. Laugh or cry.

So underneath it all, that emotional map, does it control us, or guide us out of our personal woods to fields of joy? So what emotions control you? What feelings do you avoid? Even avoiding emotion is a form of control, the emotion we seek when we do that is called “numbness”. It is often a blanket of emotional concrete covering a raging fire of emotions.

For better or worse, the only way  I’ve seen that works to really grow into the person you truly are, is to look within and loosen the knots of the heart. Emotions are not good or bad, they are our inner guidance system. It’s up to us to learn to use the tools Life has given us.