We just had our house painted. As soon as the siding and deck were finished, I noticed something…something I really didn’t want to see: evidence of termites. Not only that, recently I’d seen some little black bugs running around my house, and I had sneaky suspicion they were, dare I say it?, beetles.
We live in the Santa Cruz Mountains in Northern California. Termites and beetles are common pests here, albeit unwanted ones. They arrive when you aren’t looking and can do a tremendous amount of damage in a short amount of time.
Today, the termite inspectors came to my home, which is now so bright and shiny on the outside. Indeed, the last painter is here putting a coat on the front and back door and cleaning the patio tiles as he finishes the job. The news was not good: We have damp wood termites and beetles, just as I suspected, and they are eating our house from the inside out.
Well…I might be exaggerating a bit. They are eating some of the siding and a deck beam near the jacuzzi. That said, they are in the wood that looks so good from the outside while on the inside it is, indeed, being eaten away by little critters.
This got me to thinking about a few people I know who seem to be “eaten from the inside out” by their emotions. ย How many of us have negative emotions that we keep inside, stuffed down so no one can see them (we think)? ย We put on a positive exterior finish while inside the negative emotions continue to cause us turmoil. ย We may look good on the outside–even seem happy and “fine” most of the time–while all the while those negative emotions eat away at us from the inside out.
We only notice the “damage” done to our “house”–our emotional and physical state of being–when our “paint” cracks a bit and we have an emotional outburst or we get sick. We yell at someone for no reason. We get overly or irrationally angry. We cry over something small or become inconsolable at a sad movie. We become extremely impatient in traffic or in the grocery check-out line. If something really stressful happens in our life, we may find that our facade crumbles, or the beam in our “house” suddenly turn to dust and the structure crumbles around us. ย We have a mental or emotional breakdown. We find ourselves with a life-threatening illness.
Those who walk through life angry, depressed, feeling like victims, hurt, and negative but who put on a happy, “okay” or “fine” act for the world are just like newly painted houses being eaten away from the inside out by termites and beetles.
The inspector said we have to cut away the wet wood where the damp-wood termites live and eat. It gets replaced with dry wood; they can’t live in dry wood. The beetles…well, if there aren’t many of them in the damp wood, they can be exterminated in the wood. If there are lots and lots of them, we have to “tent” the house and fumigate it–a very expensive process. ย However, getting rid of the problem really comes down to exposing the pests, getting rid of what they feed upon and live in and then replacing those beams and pieces of siding with new ones.
It’s no different with negative emotions. We need to discover the negative emotions — expose them. We need to rid ourselves of what those emotions feed on — the causes — and live in — our thoughts, habits and ways of perceiving the world (and maybe even a few situations in our lives). And then we have to replace those with something new and positive — new, positive thoughts, habits, ways of perceiving the world, and actions. Only then will our emotions stop eating away at us from the inside out. Only then will our emotional “house” be rid of the pests that make it unstable. ย Only then can the inside of our emotional “house” actually be as fresh and attractive (and healthy) as the outside — just like my newly painted house.
