BENGALURU : The monsoon winds are here. Our skies are darkened and the cool, wet westerlies are blowing through our lands, announcing their arrival with the rustling of trees and the clanging of doors and windows left unattended, sometimes with such force that we are startled by the noise. It feels as if someone is stormily exiting a room after a quarrel.
There is something quite universal about a banging door that signifies a fight ending abruptly in a huff in families everywhere, furious parents try to train their children out of it, though the jury is out on whether it is a behaviour they learn from the adults around them or if there is something more primal in our nature that makes us express our frustration by banging doors or whatever else is around. Even if there are no doors to bang shut, people tend to make some big noise and dramatic action – anything from stomping their feet and jumping, to smashing a plate or seeing something crash.
When we can see the storm outside, the storm inside finds some resonance and hopefully calms down to see what’s next. The visual representation of a visceral emotion is gratifying. Thing is, the slamming of the door is the least of it. The violence of such actions inevitably causes damage. The door slammed shut too often tends to come off its hinges, or destroy the springs in its lock systems, or even the frame within which it is held. Sometimes, the slammed door can cause such massive reverberations that it might even crack a window near by or cause other collateral damage.
If there is a storm coming about which we are forewarned, we would take all necessary precautions. Our windows would get shut and battened down, doors secured shut, clothes and things brought in, and anything that might fly away secured and tied down. We do all that to secure our household from damage. If we know there is an emotional storm inside that is likely to similarly explode into a storm outside, wouldn’t we want to protect everything that is vulnerable and keep them secured against damage?
Our emotional storms do more damage than just a bruised door here and there. We tend to hurt the most vulnerable parts of the people we live with and know very well. Our emotional storms throw out lightning strikes that are sharp jabs at exactly the weakest spots of the people around us, hurting them so sharply that it often just takes their breath away and floors them.
The damage these cause is a lot more to long-lasting and painful. Worse, other reactive storms come up and it becomes a mess like some apocalyptic movie where survivors are trying to however they can between wild and destructive storms.We can secure our doors and things for the monsoon winds and storms, but when it is a person causing all that wreckage, we absolutely want that person to take the ownership and storm out responsibly. The writer is a counsellor with InnerSight