There are moments when emotions hit you with an unexpected force, feelings you thought were long gone suddenly resurfacing. It’s like your body and mind weren’t quite ready to process them initially, your defenses were too strong, your beliefs too rigid. In times when the future stretched out endlessly, it felt easier to bury an emotion deep inside, believing it was either gone or at least silenced.
Then, when those buried feelings begin to claw their way back to the surface, the experience can be overwhelming. You might instinctively try to suppress them, but the truth is, you’re overflowing, almost screaming with unexpressed emotion.
This isn’t an isolated experience; it may be a universal human condition, perhaps heightened for empaths, or maybe it’s something deeper still, a collective shift in consciousness. The exact reason remains elusive.
In my twenties, grappling with these intense, seemingly out-of-nowhere emotions, I began to understand the concept of the Time Traveling emotion.
Like anything that moves through time, these emotions are simultaneously rooted in another time and strikingly present in the moment they reappear. In the context of grief, a time traveling emotion can intertwine your current sadness with vivid, tender memories from the past, pulling you back to a specific moment, a seemingly insignificant detail. Or, it might feel like your heart is being yanked backward in time.
I’m reminded of my grandfather, a towering, almost mythical figure in my childhood. I can picture him hugging me in his garage, a space just beyond the intense Georgia sunlight, filled with the scent of hay and horses. It’s not just the sensory details, but the entire spectrum of feelings from that moment, completely and vividly relived.
The more I allow myself to truly feel, the faster I can recognize and process these time traveling emotions. What once took decades to resurface now might take years, then months become hours, and weeks turn into mere seconds.
I’m even learning, increasingly, to feel emotions in real time. And, crucially, to survive the experience of fully feeling an emotion as it happens.
With growing self-assurance, I’ve become more assertive about protecting my time. I consciously create space for myself, time that belongs to no one else, whether in solitude or in the company of supportive individuals. I prioritize moments where I can be present in my body and mind. In this dedicated space, whether alone or with trusted company, I become a receptive point for time traveling emotions to find me, a marked spot on the nonlinear map of my emotional landscape.
An emotion is a dynamic entity. It might present one face upon arrival, but as it recedes, you realize it’s a pattern, intricate and interconnected, like veins connecting disparate parts of yourself.
Music serves as a powerful conduit for emotions across time, through its melodies, lyrics, and even the associations tied to its era. Certain songs become soundtracks to deeply rooted memories, instantly unlocking specific emotional states. A Janet Jackson song might unexpectedly trigger a wave of innocent feeling. Conversely, a new song can surprisingly unlock emotions that have been dormant, waiting to be felt.
Each time traveling emotion, especially those that frequently revisit, softens me. It’s a humbling experience to feel something so intensely despite logic, time, circumstance, or the belief that the feeling was resolved. Grief arrives sharply, its presence like unexpected nails in my chest. Heartbreak is a heavy, explosive sensation, manifesting as full-body tears and swollen eyes. Joy, in contrast, melts away tension.
But ultimately, it’s all cyclical, like waves moving forward and upward, through and beyond. And once I navigate an emotion that has traveled through time to demand my attention, I emerge feeling incredibly resilient. This resilience, in turn, allows me to be more open and adaptable to the complex, ever-changing nature of the present moment.
I trust in my capacity to feel, to learn and grow from my emotions, and to face them rather than run when I sense them approaching.
I remain a student of this phenomenon that reshapes time. I still hold onto moments of intense emotion, but now I do so with a quiet promise: I will be ready for you when you return.
