Emotions are not something we simply “possess” within the heart; they are
realities to be lived through the body. This poem presents that resolve in
stark, direct language. Compassion, kindness, joy, sorrow, suffering, fear,
anger, and hope—each is not an abstraction but something to be embraced with
one’s whole being. To know emotion is not to observe it
from a distance, but to engage it fully and transform it into action. The poem
powerfully insists on this embodied understanding of feeling.
“To Know Emotion”
Compassion is not something to possess.
Compassion is something to enact with one’s whole being.
Kindness is not something to cultivate from
afar.
Kindness grows only when one gives oneself
to it completely.
Joy is not something to hand out.
Joy is something earned by wearing oneself
to the bone.
Sorrow is not something to wallow in.
Sorrow is something to overcome with one’s very body.
Suffering is not something to savor.
Suffering is something to endure by staking
oneself fully.
Fear is not something that simply
disappears.
Fear must be faced, braced for, and fought.
Anger is not something to wait to subside.
Anger must be hurled at what endangers one’s very being.
Hope is not something merely to hold.
Hope must be turned into the energy by
which we live.