Flinking. You Need to Know. Really, you do.
Flinking is not in the dictionary. Okay, it’s not in a normal dictionary. It is however, in the Urban Dictionary and is apparently a reference for floating in water while drinking. Hmmmm. That sounds fun. But it’s not what I mean by my own made up word that apparently is made up elsewhere. So much for being original.
Flink is in the dictionary but it’s not for me. Nope, indeed, I want flinking as my own and I here by stake my own flag around it while drinking and floating in my own inner pool. So what do I mean by flinking that isn’t urban but small city in decay?
It means to feel and think at the same time. The trouble with the West is its literal irrational saga and prejudice against emotions. Well, I should say feelings. Emotions, technically speaking, are sensations you feel in your viscera. That goofy ploppy feeling in your stomach right before you give a speech is an emotion. Calling it nerves or anxiety, or fear, is making it into a feeling. Feelings are how we interpret and label those visceral sensations. That’s what the academy says anyway - somewhere around the protoplasm of neuroscience/neurology. I forget where. May the citation gods forgive me. When I was in graduate school, I was told by someone somewhere that our brains are flooded by emotions every 3 seconds that is so unique it’s like a fingerprint. I can’t remember who told me - it’s just in this pool I’m floating around in while I hold my drink. What am I drinking anyway? [Looks at label hanging over the side] {Reads label, nods, reads aloud….) Screwball tea. That makes sense. I feel a bit screwy. Anywhoo…
Emotions are like data points that tell us a bunch of things and honestly, from a holistic and counseling stand point - ignore them at your own ulcer. The West is always down on feelings. “I feel” should be “I think.” And somehow, that “think” makes you rational, better, superior, and probably male. But it isn’t whole or healthy. It’s an unhealthy ideal that creates unhealthy labels and lifestyles that impact very real behavior not to mention a lot of unhealthy thinking! It’s thinking gone amuck!
“Flinking is feeling and thinking at the same time. It is to be embodied - to be fully present to oneself and others even while floating in a pool with a drink in your hand.”
It has long amazed me how humans have deluded themselves into the belief that thinking is somehow more rational than emotions. While I agree a heavy flooding of emotions can make one crazy, so can some kinds of thinking. I’ve been a counselor - I’ve seen it in session and read it in books. I’ve experienced it. I see it out there on social media whenever I’m swimming in that galactic space of pundit-expression-hood. I mean really, I watched some pretty terrible thinking going on. And it takes some thinking and language to interpret those emotions in the first place. People who lack some emotions and empathy tend to be interesting thinkers and do some rather distasteful things precisely because they lack the ability to emphasize - something that is tied to feeling. Psychopaths enjoy your pain by not feeling any. Sadists really enjoy your pain. Really. You can be all brain and all logic and all rational and be quite violent. Compassion, by the way, is a complex emotion/feeling. Welcome to reality. You can think and do terrible things. You can emote and do terrible things. The point isn’t one over the other, but each working with and against each other. Emotions/feelings stop us from thinking about being cruel and thinking curbs emotions/feelings from being cruel. It’s a kit that works together. Greased well, you have something called integration, emotional control/balance, resiliency, and self awareness. It takes self awareness to push it along too.
This is why leaders in dominance hierarchies in some of the literature I’ve read can make tough decisions - like firing the guy whose working three jobs to support his 8 kids, 2 of which are disabled, and his wife because one has to make cutbacks to make the shareholders happy. It’s CEO’s and leadership types that can deny an insurance claim while your kid dies from a preventable and treatable disease because your kid’s life doesn’t benefit the shareholder’s pocketbook. That’s fully “rational.” Yeah - empathy is in the feeling department too. When states, tribes, or violent sadists want to get some goods from someone else - they spur up aggression. It makes it easier to kill people. That’s pretty logical if you’re a war machine even though it involves stoking emotions/feelings in others. And let’s face it, we can, as a species, rationalize some seriously awful shit under the delusion we are rational. Haven’t you ever watched advertisement use your vulnerabilities to get you to buy, buy, buy! Of course you have! Advertising is everywhere. You can bet your bottom dollar they’re thinking and not emoting but getting YOU to be emotive without thinking - if you believe in that sort of dichotomy.
And the whole feeling thing being a female only thing is pretty nauseating. Last time I lifted the lid on baby boys, they cry, experience pain, giggle, get hungry, get mad, frustrated, happy, silly, and so much more right out of the proverbial chute. Aggression by the way, is a feeling and it’s hormonal. So when dudes and their female suckers say only women get hormonal, they need to study hormones. Men, yes, men, have them too. Many manly men say testosterone explains their lust and aggression. I say, yeah, they’re being hormonal then. Wink.
So, I am flinking. I am feeling and thinking as a whole Snickerpuss. Flinking is to be embodied - to be fully present to oneself and others. Let’s get real. If you’re not flinking, you’re probably not too aware of your own motivations or reasons for the choices you’re making and are more susceptible to projecting your emotional dung on others. Or…you're dead. You may be a psychopath or a pleasant Vulcan. Live long and prosper by flinking. Everybody is doing it - including you. So happy flinking! Oh, and here’s a towel - you’re all wet. Please keep your drink up while in the pool.
