Simplistically, emotion literacy means the ability to be literate when it comes to the emotions, especially to read them and write about them. To be literate is also to be knowledgeable, educated, well-informed. So to be emotion literate is to be well-informed about your emotions. When it comes to emotions, it seems obvious--smiling, laughing, crying--as plain as the nose on your face. The way I see it, emotions are cues for something going on internally--something deeply physical and conceptual--namely, feeling and thinking, prompted by every scenario under the sun. Learning how to fully understand the deeper implications of any given emotion is comparable to learning a foreign language and that takes time, energy and conscious effort.
As an artist, I am very interested in the complexity of feeling and thinking pathways because, like my artistic expression, neither moves in a straight line. Feeling and thinking's corresponding gestures and even the art of the written and spoken word can be grossly limited when it comes to conveying multiple layers. Facial configurations, body language and word combinations may be numerous but there are subtle internal variations so complex that they surpass the ability of the face or language to spell them out clearly.
"How do I love thee, let me count the ways..." How do I know my feelings--what, where, how, whose, when and why? It can be seriously confusing and physiologically disturbing if the knowing part gets jammed, repressed or barely formed. It's a process from moment to moment, and, moment to moment, experiences, information and feelings accumulate. Emotion literacy is a direct way of processing your own unique internal mental, physical and emotional mix. Such a process is a key to a door of perception--like seeing your own movie on a pretty big screen--but how do you see that screen from the inside out, from what angle and with whose eyes? Sometimes, the way we see things is pre-determined based on someone else's values, fears or ideas--ahhhhh, the legacy of obsolesence. That's when defining and tracking the process of emotion literacy becomes pretty challenging and the what's, where's, how's, whose, when's, why's beg more than a few questions, requiring a different context out of which to explore them.
Welcome to emotion literacy--land of reconstruction.
Please direct your questions, comments and concerns
about emotion literacy or The Radical Nurturer to
Emotion Literacy Advocates™.Copyright © 1996
Emotion Literacy Advocates™This page was last updated February 12, 1997