Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

I have learned how to email bad emotions and their accompanying physical ailments away. It is a good technique to master.

Several years ago, I opened some shipping cases to inspect some systems that a contractor had built for us. I was disappointed, then I was upset, then furious. There were a bunch of tangled cables in the shipping cases with the systems. We had spent several million dollars for these systems, and tangled cables were not acceptable to me on that day.

My face turned red, I clenched my teeth, my veins popped out on my forehead. My blood pressure shot through roof. I did what anyone would do – I sat in front of the computer, put my hands on the keyboard, and shot a heated email to the manager of the contractor who had shipped me multi-million dollar systems complete with a set of tangled cables.

Several days later, I spoke to the manager of the contractor. My frustration had subsided as did his. We calmly discussed the tangled cables and how that would never happen again. I told him about my raised blood pressure. He admitted that his blood pressure went through the roof when he read my email. It seems that I had high blood pressure, I sent him an email, and then he had high blood pressure. Aha,

I had emailed him high blood pressure.

I had never emailed something physical to anyone before. Given this experience, I concluded that you can email almost any thing to some else – especially an emotion or a physical response related to an emotion. For example, I can email:

• anger
• love
• hate
• laughter

and going along with these, I can email:

• high blood pressure
• headache
• nausea
• back ache
• bad digestion
• and the opposite of these

Here is a solution to what ails me.

1. Create an email address at one of those free email address places
2. email bad feelings or response to that address
3. all is well

There is, however, a trick to this. I have to email away all the bad feeling. It is not good enough to email some of the bad feeling or to share the bad feeling via email. I have to email away all the bad feeling. I can’t hold onto any of it.

If I were good at this emailing away my troubles, I would learn how to do it without actually sending the email. I could just imagine that I emailed away the troubles. Maybe a few more years of practice and I’ll be able to do that. For now, I’ll use email.