Emotions as an Essential Essence
Ft. Ennui from Inside Out 2
For most of us, it is more often than not that we disregard emotions in our lives. We put aside emotional responses and consider them as “side effects”, unimportant, and a way to affect us in an “irrational” way.
But, are emotions truly the “irrational” part of our lives, or perhaps they’re the ones delivering rationality amidst the irrationalities?
The World That We Know
A changing world, and we’re at the center of that most constant, rapid change that mankind has never experienced before. The world is changing in every way we could probably think of; physically, digitally, and in the utmost of unexpected change, emotionally. Yes, some might disagree or find themselves confused, but the truth is; the world is truly connected in one way or another, and a change could cause consequential changes.
But why emotions? One could say that it would be the least for us to worry about during these times of change. Yes, some would probably admit that how we work with emotions is changing, true, but there are many more to be worried about, more of which seemed to be way more crucial than just a couple of “Feelings generated in our heads”. Climate change, industrialization, artificial intelligence, wars; all the things that could furthermore alter the course of human history and all of our lives. Aren’t they more important than emotions?
Let’s take a step back in time.
Climate change was not a thing back then, at least it wasn’t threatening the penguins of Antarctica and our coastlines. Industrialization, nobody knew the meaning of the word until we decided to pop up with smoke funnels around the 18th century. Artificial intelligence? We don’t even need to bother investigating when it shows up. And wars; well, I guess it’s in our blood to just bother each other through greed and dominance.
But “greed and dominance”, perhaps that’s the cause of wars? The cause of industrialization? The cause of climate change?
Our line of sight has been narrowed down so much by the emerging problems of the modern era that we have failed to see their mutual cause, our emotional responses. There is no doubt that human tends to lean towards greed, dominance, and other self-centered characteristics. But when we connect them with emotional responses such as empathy, we start to wonder;
In theory, it should’ve been able to dampen those “negative traits”. The feelings we had for those who experienced loss because of our greediness should’ve stopped us from going any further. But the reality is that we kept on going, we pursued the will of our own, and the emotions that would’ve reminded us of the chaos we were creating, had become nothing but a vague guilt trip for us.
So, dead end?
No. I think when one emotion falls, another rises. When we are sad, happiness falls within ourselves, but when we are refueled with joy, that feeling of grief will fade away and be replenished with the happiness that was gone.
The first law of thermodynamics.
No. The first law of emotions.
I like to picture emotions as the replacement of energy but within the mental universe. In the world, the first law of thermodynamics states that energies cannot be deleted or created. Energy could convert, but it would never be gone. The electricity in your house is not deleted, but they are converted to light, heat, and all the electronic processes in your house.
What if, the same applies to emotions?
So, about that “numb” condition we had described earlier; the moment we consider empathy, sympathy, telepathy (nope not this one), and other remindful feelings as just a manipulative emotion dragging us into guilt, is it truly a point of emotionless state, or maybe, it is an emotion of itself?
Enter Ennui,
An emotion that had not long ago broken the internet with its appearance on the trailer for Inside Out 2
After I did some research, Ennui is a surprisingly unique emotion. Ennui is described as an emotional state where we constantly feel boredom and numbness toward our surroundings, due to dissatisfaction and the lack of motivation. I agree that some would probably even say that this, is not an emotion, but it is *shrug. Who would have thought that a feeling of emptiness, numbness, and boredom, would be categorized as an emotion? The exact opposite of what an emotion should mean, but somehow it falls into it. Turns out, it was never a gap. It may seem like a gap, but it was just one of the shapes of emotions, likewise how energy could take place in multiple forms, yet it was still the same energy as before.
The “Motion” in Emotion.
The consciousness and emotions of humanity are what make humans, “humans”. We are equipped with a set of abilities that only we, in this vast world, have. An ability to feel, to sense, to interpret our surroundings through an unexplainable cognitive mechanism. Even in the emptiness of thoughts and feelings, that mechanism still works inside of us in one way or another.
Our life in this world is put into motion through our own unique, individual responses. This is why a person has their ways of responding to certain situations and others differently. Emotion moves us in the world, while animals are moved through primal instincts. Emotions enable us to feel love, warmth, and connection between each other. These feelings which are not present in animals are what makes us different from them, our free will combined with individual emotions generate the actions we choose to take.
No, we are never free from emotions. On the contrary, we are always surrounded by it. Emotion is not just a “feeling generated in our heads”, it is something real, and it is something we often misunderstand. Emotion moves us, creates us, and shapes who we are.
