On being emotional
I’ve always had a problem with being called “unemotional”. People usually make me feel like my cognition was the number one hinderance to being human. Then I came across the concept of Emotional Intelligence (it seemed quite oxymoronic, anyway). Many people told me I needed to take lessons and tests to improve myself (some even said they hard a tough time thinking what it would be like if I ever fell in love. Eh???). I took emotional intelligence tests and passed them all very excellently; even better than my “emotional” friends. According to one of the tests, my score was a whooping 95 out of 100 possible points!!! It dazzled me! So-it’s-like-I’m-so-unemotional-because-I’m-intelligent-but-I’m-emotionally-intelligent…Shoot me!
Let’s think about emotions (sorry if I’m messing with your mind). An emotion is simply a feeling based on a fact. You don’t ever feel anything for no reason (yes, I did it again), of course, except you’re under an influence. If you’re happy, it’s because there’s good news, and if you’re sad, it’s because there’s bad news. This doesn’t mean news in itself has any feeing attached to it. Your favorite team’s loss is good news to someone else; especially if it fetched him some money.
I don’t believe that emotions are opposite to logic; not anymore than I would believe that you were a goat because your salad had no cream in it. Emotions should actually be an expression of logic. When we say a person is emotional, what we are really trying to say is that the person gets to react based on the first thought (perspective) that crosses his/her mind on a subject matter. This isn’t emotionalism; it’s poor thinking! If it were emotionalism, based on the way we equate emotionalism to being human, it would surely be the perfect explanation to “To err is human”. Of course, you err when you think wrong. Duh???
I’m sure you already see where I’m going with this. We need to redefine what we know as being emotional. You shouldn’t feel like you’re being human because you think poorly, any more than a poorly thinking monkey would feel human. That doesn’t make it human; at best, it’s only a foolish monkey. What makes you human is that you put some intelligence behind the deployment of your emotions. Don’t react based on the first perspective that comes to mind. Delay your feelings for proper evaluation. If you looked at a cube from one side, you’d call it a square. That’s reducing a 3-dimensional object to a 1-dimensional one; you’re two dimensions away from the real stuff.
Please, be careful. There’s a snake under your chair.
