Emotional Reasoning Amidst the Sea of Life

We humans are optimization engines. Given a set of constraints that each of us deems important differently, we are constantly faced with situations that force us to choose among limited options to optimize for some constraints while giving up on others.

For example, when finding an apartment for rent, we would like ones that are cheap, close to our workplace, and surrounded by necessary amenities. But in reality, we have to trade something for the others. We may choose a cheaper apartment that is a bit far from the workplace, or we can choose ones that are closer to the workplace but more expensive.

This is an example of factual reasoning. We choose something based on tangible evidence which can often be summarized into numbers and compared.

Emotional reasoning is a very similar system but runs on another dimension of the world. While factual reasoning runs on tangible facts, emotional reasoning runs on intangible values such as being good, lovable, hard-working, and generous. The set of values that each of us deems important differently is referred to by the psychological term “ego”.

Similarly, we are often faced with situations where we have to choose to retain some values of our ego while giving up on others.

For example, we may have to choose among actions that make us a good person to someone but evil to other people. Or we have to bear being foolish, selfish, irresponsible, etc. for something in order to protect some other values.

In both factual and emotional systems, some people can struggle with indecisiveness, which occurs when we have too many things we deem important and have to constantly make tradeoffs. We may use the word “perfectionism” to describe this kind of behavior in both dimensions.

In such situations, we perfectionists usually become upset and blame anything for giving us “no choices”. But actually, it is us all the time who cut ourselves off from choices. It is difficult for us to admit the reality that constantly tears apart our “perfect ego”, and therefore we suffer greatly.

Life is like a sea of Tsunami waves. They see that we load too much on our greedy ship. So they constantly test us:

What is really important to you?

They attack us to see what is the one last “asset” that we hold dearest at the end of the journey of losing everything else.

And so that is the “reason” you choose for yourself.