I was teaching students about emotions, but I don’t know what to do with mine. I’m on a cliff; soaring above it, barely. How do I feel: Happy? Sad? crumbly?
I then remembered reading Emily Dickinson’s poem in high school, and I understood my feelings better:
| Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune–without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I’ve heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me. |