Get over it

In life, the hardest fight we will ever have is with our own feelings. 

Star Trek: The Next Generation is my favourite science fiction series, and Data (played by Brent Spiner) is my favourite character. Data is an android and consequently has no feelings, until his 'brother', Lore gives him an emotion chip. Switching on the chip is initially more than Data can handle due to the intensity of the emotions. His pleasure at being disgusted by a new drink he tries is humourous, but the paralysing terror he feels in a dangerous situation jeopardises his own safety and that of his Enterprise crew mates. He cannot control his feelings so he decides to deactivate the chip.

How good would it be to have an emotion chip which you could simply switch off? How many times have you been told to get over something, and been angered by the suggestion because it belittled your feelings, and because it made the erroneous assumption that you could merely flick a switch and the feelings would go away? If only it were that easy.

Data eventually learned to control his feelings, but not, as the Vulcans do, by suppressing them, and not by ignoring them, nor by deactivating his emotion chip whenever things became to much for him. Data mastered his feelings, both the pleasurable and the painful, and allowed them to enrich his life. As excruciating as they sometimes are, would you really want to be without your feelings? Would you really prefer to be heartless? Think of what you would miss out on...ecstasy, intimacy, warmth, love and joy.

A battle rages between our hearts and minds, between what we think and how we feel. This is the human experience.We must endure suffering to enjoy pleasure. We must spend some time in the dark to appreciate the light. We must know brokenness before embracing healing.

I would love to be able to flick a switch and shut down my feelings sometimes, but I can't. And so I fight on in the space between what is and what I want to be, between the way things are and they way they should be. Much of what happens to us is beyond our control, as are our feelings about what happens to us. We are not androids or Vulcans. We are fragile humans created in the image of a God who understands exactly what it means to truly suffer.


read more about Data
Top Ten Data episodes

The Emotional Locomotive

National Rugby League club, Cronulla Sharks set an unenviable record last week in their 0-26 loss. It was the third consecutive match in which they had not been able to score a point. No team had ever done that before. Imagine going out to play your next match with that record on your mind. Early in the second half of the subsequent game which they played away from home against a much more highly rated team, the Sharks were behind 0-22. It was clearly a case of de-ja-vu.

As they ran out on to the ground to start the match, were the players hopeful? Or did they expect to lose? Were they thinking that regardless of their effort, they would be defeated? As their opponents racked up points against them, did what little hope they might have had, perish in the fire of reality? Did the players still believe they could win that match, or did they give up? 

It has been said that sport, any sport, is mostly played in the mind. Attitude impacts significantly on performance. Many games are won or lost before they have even been played. This is true of life. Our emotions want to run our lives, and for better or worse, we often succumb to their demands. Our heads might shout loud statements of logic but our feelings block our ears with stubborn stupidity, and insist that their way is right. 

Sometimes, the supremacy of emotion works in our favour. Positive feelings can empower us, and provide strength to do what the head says we should. Our feelings can help us, inspire us and inspire others. Negative feelings can, on the other hand, cripple us. Feelings can be nearly impossible to control. Have you ever tried to tell yourself to cheer up when you feel depressed? Ever tried to tell yourself to calm down when you are angry? We are not robots, and yet we have this sense that our feelings are not the most reliable of advisers. Emotions should be the caboose, not the locomotive of our trains. We risk running off the tracks when we are led by our hearts instead of our heads, and yet this is how we live: fragile, broken humanity feigning total control when the truth is we are quite helpless.

The Sharks battled their demons of doubt, their feelings of inadequacy, their frustration and the sense of inevitability that the scoreline delivered to them. The final score was 24-22. This victory by the Sharks was easily the most inspirational moment of my week. What has inspired you recently?

Photographs courtesy of
http://www.sharks.com.au/

Headbanging with Wolves

The story of a Norwegian boy who frightened off a pack of wolves who were surrounding him by blasting them with a heavy metal track, made me think about the significant times in my life when music in general, or a particular song, has been inextricably linked.

Every time I hear 'I See Red' by Splitz Enz, I recall sitting next to my mum in the car when another car rear ended her as she waited to turn into the driveway of my uncle's house. Hearing Tears for Fears always makes me think of an old girlfriend. Songs by my boyhood bands, Australian legends, like Midnight Oil and The Angels, transport me back in time. I associate Stryper with my early years as a Christian when I abandoned all my heavy metal music, including giving away my 15 album strong KISS collection. It was time when I needed to hear 'To Hell with the Devil', by Stryper rather than 'we worship you Satan' by Possessed.

At different times and in different situations, the lyrics of particular songs can be remarkably poignant. "Wherever you Go" by Richard Marx is our song. The words were so appropriate as my wife and I spent most of our courtship separated by thousands of kilometres. In this song we heard our own voices, our emotions, our thoughts expressed better than we could have done ourselves.

This is the real power of music: to connect to the heart of the listener. Regardless of the style of music, (everyone knows metal rules anyway), the songs I love, speak to me. They provide words when I cannot find them. Have you ever listened to the lyric of a song and thought it was written for you, or to you, or about you?

Sometimes these kinds of high impact songs can be helpful, they provide happiness, empathy and even comfort, but sometimes they can be harmful. How many times can you listen to a song before you know the lyric, and at what point do you believe it? When does it become a part of you forever? When does it transform your mind? When does it convince you? When does it drag you into dark places and lock you up? When does it seditiously plant lies in your mind?

When wolves surround you, how will you scare them away? Are the songs in your head powerful enough to defeat your enemies, or are they eroding your will, weakening your resolve, leaving your vulnerable. Hugely popular heavy metal band, Disturbed, have called their current tour, Music as a Weapon. I rest my case.