Feelings
I work in software engineering.
In engineering, depending on the culture or team you are in, usually, feelings (or emotions) are not considered important, or even, sometimes, they are considered “something that’s nonexistent”, because “everyone is supposed to speak from logic and reasons” in engineering.
I used to think in this way too. I believed everything I thought and reasoned came from logic and rationale. Until I read Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. The book introduced an important concept to me: Emotional Literacy. The book also mentioned, professionals working in certain fields tend to have less awareness of their own emotions, let alone the emotions of others; engineering is unsurprisingly one of these fields.
This understanding opened a new world for me.
I realized, at that time, I was emotionally illiterate.
I also got to know another concept related to emotional illiteracy: Somatization. For individuals who do not have a good sense of how they feel moment by moment, feelings or emotions tend to solidify in their muscles and nervous systems and then manifest as pains or tensions (heaviness) in muscles.
Later on (Spring of 2019) I started practicing Vipassana meditation. I could finally agree and tell from my own meditation practice: we (humans) are fundamentally emotional beings:
Every single thought and action comes from emotion(s)/feeling(s).
When we feel great, meaning on the subtlest level, most of the tiny little sensations we feel (which usually don’t registered by our conscious mind when we are going through our daily activities) at the moment are good, our thoughts are more positive. When we feel bad, negative thoughts surface and occupy our conscious mind.
To put it in another way: emotions and feelings are the fundamental driving force behind every single thought and action of ours.
We are programmed to chase the good feelings and avoid the bad ones. And every moment of our existence, there are millions of subtle feelings arising and passing away within our body, they affect our thoughts and actions in the way most of us never realize.
After knowing this from my own meditation experience, asking myself the question, “why am I doing what I’m doing? What emotion am I experiencing right now” becomes a habit for me.
