The joys and perils of feeling
Barefoot in the world
Our feet have over 7,000 nerve endings in each foot. They are highly sensitive radars informing our minds of endless experiences every second.
I sometimes take my daily walk in minimal sandals, and over my routine mile-and-a-half trek, I may have one modest jolt of an unpleasant feeling, a rock, or a gnarled root that catches my foot a bit, but the fuller experience of the ground beneath me is life. We aren’t as separate from this big beautiful world as we’ve convinced ourselves. Separateness is a myth; we are united with the pulsing world and all that lives and dies here. This is something worth recovering, even if it comes with a pang of a sharp rock or two.
A mile in today’s shoes
Looking at modern footwear, it seems the goal has been to shut our foot radar down completely. Giant foam soles mean we insulate our feet from every sensation they might encounter. Shoes are praised for being comfortable and keeping us from all feelings (good or bad) while limiting the effort our feet are asked to make.
Feet, by the way, are beautifully designed to strongly adapt to every angle and undulation of a walking surface while delivering second-by-second signals to our brains. All that lovely design for sensory experience be damned. We let it all go to sleep while wearing pillowy casts.
To be fair, we walk on manufactured surfaces now more than ever in human history. My little path is an exception to my walking surfaces the rest of the day. I contend some of that can be changed if we exert little effort. For instance, maybe put this down right now, free your feet, and let your toes spread out over the grass. That will stir up some memories. It’s an experience that calls us back to carefree days long ago. I’ll be here when you get back.
Hey, I know my limits
I won’t try to talk you out of your Hokas; I know my limits.
The multi-billion dollar shoe industry has sold us on shoes that narrow at the toe (the exact opposite shape of a human foot) and that we still need raised heels in shoes (entirely cosmetic and a holdover from the era of riding horses). It’s impressive salesmanship. They tend to fix the problems they create.
I won’t undo the conditioned expectation of footwear; I merely want you to see how this same approach to unnatural protection from our experience is how we navigate our emotional lives. And it has spiritual implications.
The insulation we use from our emotions takes many shapes. Recently I heard someone say, “Emotions can’t hit a moving target.” One way to not feel our feelings is to over-schedule our lives. Stay on the move. Or if heaven forbid, we ever find ourselves stuck in the traffic of our calendar, we reach for our phones, doom scroll a bit to distract ourselves.
There’s a blessing to be found in fully feeling what we’re feeling. The beatitude is “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Those who go the full route of their feeling find they’re caught in the faithful arms of the Comforter. Fall short of that by avoiding that, and the experience of comfort doesn’t come either.
Running to escape takes many forms
Look, I won’t talk you out of your emotional Hokas, either. Many economic forces stand ready to deliver you and me from all pain or temporary discomfort. I believe the rise of marijuana usage is partly due to our instinct to escape or insulate ourselves from our feelings. Long-time marijuana user Woody Harrelson famously backed away from regular use for this exact reason. He said:
"I wanted to be emotionally available to my family, to my friends. It was a good experiment," said Harrelson, who lives in Hawaii with his family.
The risk is worth it
Being open to the richness in our experience may mean surrendering to the occasional jolt of displeasure, but it will expand our lives to know the comfort we can enjoy. Ridding ourselves of things like anxiety or sadness isn’t in the offering, but can you be with the experience knowing you’re held? It may be the only way to know.
Be well, Feral Souls.
Bookclub:
If you’re reading our book club book or would like to start, here’s discussion questions for chapter two. Post any thoughts in the commnets:
Place chapter two
Please don’t see this as a comprehensive list of all possible questions or thoughts, it never could be. Add, edit and discuss something entirely outside these observations!
She begins with an interesting myth of how birds were formed and the way ground helps them recall/remember their origin. In what ways can you relate to being on ‘solid ground’ as a comfort?
Richard Rohr describes good religion as given us roots AND wings, what do you think of that?
Cole writes “Place has always been the thing that made us. We cannot escape being formed by it.” (p. 18).
Have you thought much about the way a particular place has formed you? Have you ever tried to escape it?
In what ways has the place you’re from helped you, or hurt you?
Have you considered travel to be a requisite to ‘finding myself’?
She quotes Simon Weil who wrote “To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul”. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
Cole describes her grandmother in NYC as people moved past her like she was the wall, and that New York City allowed her to get lost. If we are born and raised in a particular place is it harder to have a “place to exhale” as she states it.
Cole traces the story of God’s people out of Egyptian bondage and towards a place of their own. We too live as ones spiritually released from bondage and destined for elsewhere (aliens and strangers in our present home). What ways do you see God’s promise always being a place; “a liberation born of location.”
Cole delivers some sharp critique on the effect of losing place, and what might have inspired the action of those who took it. What are your thoughts on the following quote? Can it expand our capacity to hear her wounds more fully?
“I do not know from where my ancestors were abducted. I cannot tell you what the air smells like there. I don’t know what sound the waves and soil speak. These things were stolen from me as they were from them. I think it is one of the deepest evils to become a thief of place, to make someone a stranger to their home, and then mark their relationship to the land by bondage instead of love. To steal place has less to do with power than with hatred. How much must one hate oneself and one’s life and one’s own land to run around chasing everyone else’s? I used to think colonization was about ego, and maybe it is. But maybe it’s not that the oppressors think they’re worthy of more but that they believe their present self is, in fact, worthless. It’s the work of people incapable of perceiving their dignity without attempting to diminish someone else’s. It is no surprise to me then that these same powers, in the end, care so little for the land they are desperate to conquer. It was never about love or curiosity or care but a violent act of self-soothing.”
(p. 22)
Ultimately the story of her life is part of a larger redemption as she sees it: “To know that, at a time when the transatlantic abduction, enslavement, and purchase of Black bodies was occurring, God was preparing a place. A place for this little Black girl from Pittsburgh.” (p. 25) How important is it to believe in the greater goodness of God in the face of evil in the world?