Every day we wake up with the need to “release”.
What is that “release” we do not know. How it forms we do not know. But we have the need every single day. Even before opening your eyes in the morning you can feel it. Every morning, no exceptions.
It could be that because the nervous system works on electrical potentials (Na/K pump) there is something like “static electricity” that stays in the system. Or maybe the nervous system indeed needs to arrive to a final point in anything it interacts with (Gestalt and Gestalt psychology). Or consider the so called “Dominant” described by a Russian physiologist in the mid 1920s – an overly excited part of the nervous system that takes over your entire being and draws energy from all the other body structures and systems until it is resolved, often for many years and even your entire life.
Either way – I’m yet to meet a person that hears about the idea of the “daily need to release” and not agree with it.
So we wake up and go about our day doing what we have to or feel like doing. But the undercurrent is always the same – we are looking for the release.
Because we can’t formulate it and we do not even know about it we end up engaging in all sorts of behaviors, habits, interactions, mental states that are an inferior substitute for the release.
Think diving into stress (for a variety of “good reasons”), workaholism, drama, conflict, over/under eating, compulsive physical exercise, obsessive hobbies/interests, drugs, Netfix binging… you continue the list.
What none of us can deny is the eternal memory of a moment or two of actual release that we have experienced at some point. It felt as if a burden was taken off our entire being. For a short time we felt as if we are light. We “arrived”. Arrived at a place where we didn’t even realize we were searching nor we know how long we’ve been searching. The easiest and simple of examples of that feeling is an orgasm. But that is not the only time, not at all.
Just yesterday I said to myself aloud “So this is how achieving and success feel, taste, smell like…” – because I had walked a long road of learning something from zero and actually making a very specific product that has extreme qualities and performance. It had taken me at least 5 years. That moment yesterday was a release. The day seemed to be very quiet, very active, and somehow lit by a beautiful light. The mood lasted a few hours. I do not remember the last time I felt like that but I have felt that before several times after “arriving” to some closing point.
If I can say anything about the release that would be that the release has to do with arriving to a closure about something that lived deep in your soul for a long time. That is the “resolution of the Dominant” that the Russian professor described. That Dominant needed a resolution and it pushed for it every single day. That could be a specific problem or a blurry set of needs that needed a resolution. One simple example of a release all of us know is the moment you find a solution to an almost irrelevant problem – after obsessively looking for some minor thing or piece of information. Maybe an old picture, some tiny memento (a souvenir), or an old comment in some forgotten social media post. Yesterday an internet friend of mine approached me with a request to find such an old and forgotten comment. We were able to dig it up and he was elated. I think yesterday he had a release.
There is an interesting effect that takes place after or around the time of the release. You “magically” find answers or peace about other things you carried inside you. Yesterday I also found a perfectly practical solution to an ongoing problem involving old dogs and their daily maintenance. The solution is super simple and it felt like knew about it all along but it came to the surface only after another problem was brought to closure.
Moral of the story:
What do you think you need to release?
Or better yet – ask yourself:
“What do I need to do to release things inside me that I do not even know about?”
The answer to that is always the same – some habit or behavior change that will bring you closer to peace, closer to people you admire and love.
The above was all about love. What did you think? π