Diamondback Online - The University of Maryland's Independent Daily Student Newspaper

Issue date: 3/27/08 Section: Opinion

Tim Hiller

So it's about the time of the year when The Diamondback is flooded with columns about graduating, looking back on college experiences, or looking ahead to the unknown future. It seems more appropriate to offer a critique of what I've learned about myself during college.

Allow me to relate a proverb as passed down by my grandmother:

Once long ago there was a warlord who was ravaging the Tibetan countryside, pillaging monasteries as he moved from village to village. When he approached the monastery where a particular monk lived, all the other monks fled to the countryside. When the warlord entered the monastery, he was enraged to find that the monk had not fled.

"Don't you know who I am?" the warlord demanded angrily. "I could take this sword and stick it through your stomach without even blinking!"

"Don't you know who I am?" the monk calmly responded. "I could feel your sword pass through my stomach, and I would not blink."

At times in my life, I have been one of the cowardly monks. Not fleeing into the hills in fear of my life, but fleeing from emotions and feelings that were too difficult to confront. Almost all of us have some sort of baggage that makes us want to pull back, to run and hide. As a child I learned to retreat from my feelings to protect myself emotionally from my parents' constant shouting matches and subsequent divorce. Today I continue that habit.

My role as the cowardly monk has all but ensured that, at times, I am also the angry warlord, whose buried emotions come out at the wrong time or in the wrong setting. Those who know me would certainly agree that at times it has seemed as if I have a chip on my shoulder. There have been times where I've taken arguments way too far, damaging friendships and even straining familial relations. I've taken criticism personally and immaturely at times. I've projected my hurt from the past on people who didn't deserve it.

This summer I had an experience that allowed me to see the connection between my bottled-up feelings and what I have just described.

I was about ready to sit down with my family for a nice dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Bethesda. All of a sudden, my heart started pounding and I lost control of my breathing. I thought back to a couple weeks earlier when I had been complaining to doctors about nagging chest pains, and was told it was just heartburn. This was no heartburn. I started getting flush; my hyperventilation was causing my muscles to tense up painfully. Once the ambulance arrived, the paramedic knew exactly what was up. "Have you ever had a panic attack before?" he asked.

In the aftermath of this experience, I realized when one flees from emotions, it is only a matter of time before they come back like an angry fan demanding his or her money back after a canceled concert. Popular culture tells us to do something about our feelings immediately or to get over it and move on. After all, who has time to grieve, to miss someone, to feel anxious? There are lecture slides that must be memorized, internships that must be obtained, graduate schools to apply to, resumé-padding titles to compete for. It seems as if there is always that next hoop that we are pressured to jump through, and in the course of things some lose track of what really is important. It's important to take in your emotions. Even if you are a very goal-oriented person (I consider myself to be one) who has set up many hoops for yourself to jump through, you'll be much more successful in the long run if you take time to get to know yourself before rushing to the next hoop.

So next time you feel some old baggage coming up, next time you are in a bad mood and don't know why, the next time someone you love makes you sad, it's important to take conscious breaths over your feelings, to understand and accept their presence. If it's been a while and you don't feel good about moving on, then take the steps to get the professional help you need to let the emotion pass through you, like the sword passing through the stomach of the brave monk. You could decide not to, but you can't say I didn't warn you when you're on the ground hyperventilating and the paramedic asks, "Have you ever had a panic attack?"

Tim Hiller is a senior microbiology major. He can be reached at thriller@umd.edu.

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