Humans usually have hard time coping with the things that they can't observe through senses, like seeing, hearing, touching, tasting or smelling. That is why abstract concepts are hard to grasp or even agree on. And emotion is one of the most controversial subjects. In this post, I will try to make sense of the sensible, and explain how an emotion works and how much is misunderstood.
So to being with, whether you believe in a god and a soul and devil (like I do) or not, there are emotions based on hormones and there are also pure brain structure based ones. Most of the times, you literally can't stop emotions from emerging. This much is known physiologically. But the experience of the emotion is kind of subjective and personal. You can draw me an object but you can only describe a feeling or an emotion. This is why we are having disagreements on some abstract things like emotions. But that argument is non-sensical, you just have to accept different beings will have different emotional experiences at different levels. But we need to first acknowledge that emotions are not some supernatural forces driving us. They are observable and manageable.
So if the emotions are observable and manageable, does that mean we need to try to take control of them? Because you might think, "if you feel bad and continue feeling bad, you will start physically getting bad too". That is definitely true, since your brain and body will start accepting the new reality and start adjusting according to it. But this is for bad situations right? If you feel joy, who is to say "stop feeling joy"? No one would advice you to be bummed or bored or angry. But in return, your brain will start adjusting to that too. And it may not be as linear as you might think. You can't force happiness on your brain. You can't get rid of sadness with a magic wand either. There is this term called "positive vibes" these days and I definitely support it. But people also need a reality check. Disregarding the bad stuff won't be good for society, since you are a part of it, and also, you can't live in a bubble. You will engage with the people and the world in life, so brace yourself and train yourself, rather than trying to control your emotions or life.
Should we suppress emotions or let them exists. There are different approaches to this, but you first need to know yourself. For example, I experience emotions on the edges and I know it since childhood. If you don't know yourself, your emotions will get you in trouble. But for everyone, I can say suppressing harmful ones like anger or jealousy can at least stop the disastrous outcomes. The ones like fear or sadness is perfectly normal ones but they will keep you from moving on. I wouldn't necessarily suggest to suppress the ones that stagnates you, let them co-exist with you and try to manage them or tame them or maybe let time take care of them or maybe even seek for professional help. But all this has one prerequisite: Being true to yourself to identify your emotions and roots. The positive emotions are almost always ok, as long as you are in sync with reality and not blinded. If you want to talk about emotions, it quickly becomes like life advice, which is a dangerous thing to do in this subject.
Is being emotional a bad thing? No, on the contrary, it makes you more human. But people often explain it like "not seeing reality and being stuck in the brain or emotions". Maybe some people are prone to let emotions drive them uncontrollably and it would result in actions detach from reality. They would also be unreliable. But if you are having emotions and embracing them, but in the end you acknowledge them and control yourself and act on real information, you are turning into a realist. There is also misinformation about being a realist. Realism is not dismissing or disregarding emotions, it is about both acknowledging them and trying to decide objectively.
There is a strange human behavior. A person can like and love another person but people rarely look for intelligence or nerdiness or achievements for a marriage, to live with someone. They look for emotions in a person, and ideally, overlapping emotions which we call "common interests". For example, getting angry or excited or happy on the same subjects seems important to people. Also people are looking for people who are experiencing emotions at some level, instead of robots. Which is perfectly normal. You can be dumb as hell and also fun as hell to live with. At this point, a realist would say your future is shaky since it doesn't have reliable ground. And a realist would probably be right. Seeking for emotions is normal, but basing a relationship on them are not enough to live together. There are also views on matters and they can easily collide. So in the end, you would need a person who is "willing to" make things work out with you.
The worst case scenarios when it comes to emotions are these two: Having less emotions and being a psychopath or something. Or having loads of emotions driving you and trying to ignore this fact. The second situation makes you stubborn on your mistakes and leads you to constantly looking for excuses in life. You can be affected by your emotions and it is natural, but if you assume you don't have them, you will turn into a puppet. As I said before, you don't have to suppress emotions, you have to realize them and keep the reality check. You might even have the luxury to let your emotions decide in some cases, you can choose to yell at someone because they make you angry. But after that, you should assess yourself and ask "did he deserve it or did I overreact a little bit". Because trying to disregard your emotions will make you blind and you will start assuming you are doing the right things for the right reasons.
So controlling your emotions are hard. Keeping calm can be hard. And in my belief, devil is interfering with the physiological mechanisms in our body or brain. That makes us prone to errors. Emotions don't filter things, they just act. And some emotions are poked by devil to let you go bad ways. I am not saying emotions are evil, it is just that there is another level behind them. It is a spiritual level. Which is one more reason to realize yourself and your emotions and trying to be in control.
I am not the only one suggesting to control emotions. Emotional intelligence is a long lived topic already. But the weird thing is, people suppress or try to dismiss emotions and call it emotional intelligence. We see this mostly on educated people, since uneducated people are already inconsiderate of their actions. But the educated people are sometimes focus on something in life and create a tunnel vision towards it. And that focus is requiring stubborn advance, day by day, inch by inch. But this is costly on emotions because as I mentioned before, you can't decide to have emotions or vanish them. You will have the battle with yourself constantly. I have written something about this in my post titled travelers of That life.
There are 3 main reasons why people don't have emotions. First is a psychological disorder and it can be treated. Second, you are used to the experiences and became numb. This is not that harmful but not ideal either. We need some energy to feel like a human. Third category is the people who suppressed them and called it emotional intelligence. In real definition, I think emotional intelligence has a lot more depth, varying from person to person.
Whether it is rooted because of the connections in your brains or pure hormones, emotions are as real as your bones. Just like a lot of things in life, you need to acknowledge them, get to know them, get to know yourself and try to live peacefully in control. I believe deciding with emotions are almost always bad. But if you are not a materialistic machine, you have to have them. I really wonder what you feel after reading my posts. Rage? Boredom? Hopelessness? Whatever it is, I hope I see you at the next post :)
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