Just as environmentalists measure air quality and nutritionists evaluate food quality, we need to measure the quality of the emotional ambience around us.
Our emotional environment is just as important as the air we breathe and the food we consume, but humanity has yet to formally recognize its importance.
While the steps to regulate emotional environment may not be as clear as those used to regulate food and air, what we are exposed to emotionally is no less significant to human wellbeing.
Insights into our emotional life are easy to grasp intellectually, but to put them into practice in our lives calls for a great deal of rigor and mindfulness.
For example, when we exhibit emotional poisons through our patterns of possessiveness, jealousy, aggression, sadism, domination, control and manipulation, we may fall into denial, finding excuses or blaming others.
We may also avoid responsibility by ascribing it to the “company culture” or “family values.”
On the positive side, we are also blessed with the capacity to detox and to rise to an enlightened consciousness.
The Indian mystic Osho, known for his unique insights into the mysteries of consciousness, noted that we have a powerful human need just to be seen and accepted for who we are. The fulfilment of this need is the perfect antidote to life’s emotional poisons.
It appears so simple, but we may be surprised by how rarely this basic need is fulfilled. It is easy to feel invisible or to feel accepted conditionally only when we fulfill the expectations of others in return for their approval.
We spend more than half our waking lives in bureaucracies designed to operate like machines. In machines, the individual parts are replaceable entities and valued only for the utilitarian function they perform.
Occasionally, we are lucky enough to be part of a team that takes the time to understand us as human beings and to know our values, professional aspirations, developmental needs and life goals.
Being seen, accepted and understood for the person we are, rather than as a robot performing a job description, is therapeutic in the fast-paced, results-based world we live in.
We may wear social masks that hide our true nature while at work, but the reality of who we are within the core of our being surfaces in our intimate inner circle. The hurt and betrayal we suffer at the hands of parents, siblings, lovers and spouses (supposedly the people who love us the most) and the hurt we may inflict on them can be far more grievous than what we suffer at the workplace.
The more intimate the relationship, the deeper the potential for injury. Those who inflict trauma often have suffered at the hands of others themselves, reminiscent of the saying “Hurt people hurt people.”
As a society, we need to awaken to vigilantly monitoring the emotional quality of the environments we inhabit at work and in our personal lives. Raising our consciousness regarding the quality of emotional life is an important step in becoming a truly civilized society.
Meanwhile, we owe it to our loved ones and to ourselves to help each other heal from the emotional poisons we may have ingested and administered. In being truly present in all our interactions, so people feel seen by us for who they are, we will provide -- as Osho would have hoped -- an oasis for weary travelers to quench their thirst.