It has been covered by many artists throughout the years, including a 1993 hit version by Jimmy Cliff, who re-recorded the song for the motion picture soundtrack of ‘Cool Runnings’, where it reached the top 20 at Number 18 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’.
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Having spent almost thirty years as a counseller (family, marriage and adoption), group worker, probation officer, relaxation trainer, and stress management consultant, I know enough about the importance one’s ‘feelings’ have in the influence and management of one’s health, hope and happiness.
As a behaviourist since 1970, I have spent a lifetime specialising in the components that make up one’s behaviour pattern (the way and the reasons why we do or don’t do certain things in particular ways) and can espouse a few things with certainty.
Our behaviour pattern (the way we respond to given situations and stimuli) is composed of three behavioural types:
(1) aggressive
(2) appropriately assertive
(3) non-assertive
We will all display some of these types of behaviour occasionally, but one’s overall response pattern is always predominant in one of these three areas above. We are either mostly ‘aggressive’, or mostly ‘appropriately assertive’, or mostly ‘non-assertive’ in ‘character type’.
All problem behaviour is composed of three prime emotions that lead to body imbalance. The three prime emotions are:
(1) anger
(2) fear
(3) love (lack of it)
At the heart of all emotional dysfunctioning, disturbance or breakdown lies:
(1) too much or too little anger in certain situations
(2) too much or too little fear in certain situations
(3) too little love expressed to self or others.
One of the country’s leading psychologists once told me that the occasions when we are least in control of our feelings are when we are in the middle of any personal crisis such as separation, loss or bereavement of a loved one, divorce etc. He said that at such times in our lives, our emotions are usually too intense to result in clarity of thought and proper perspective. At such times when our feelings are all over the place, we are more prone to irrationality and are unable to identify the causal factor of our problem situation/behaviour.
I know this to be true. Whenever I hear of therapists talking about their clients gaining ‘insight’ during their sessions, I am always hesitant to believe it as being so. Not that therapists don’t achieve good work with talking and listening to their clients; I’m sure that all talking with anyone helps, especially trained professionals. However, by its very composition of problematic and intense feelings, whenever someone is in the middle of a crisis, their intensity of emotion will prevent them from seeing clearly through their thick fog of feeling. It is only after the emotions have diminished in strength and increased in rationality, that 'insight' becomes possible, and only then, are we able to discern the causal factors and how we dealt with our problem behaviour.
Therefore, keeping one’s emotions in balance leads to one being able to say, ‘I can see clearly now’.
Love and peace. Bill xxx