Emotional Uncertainty.
July 12th, 2005 | by john |I wonder how it’s possible for anyone to be absolutely sure about their emotions.
Sure, you can be absolutely sure of being happy about aceing a difficult test you’ve studied hard for but isn’t it possible that several years afterwards, your happiness with that particular incident will fade away? I think so… because I’m sure I was ecstatic about doing well on tests and papers back in middle/high school but I can’t seem to remember all of them.
In complete contrast, I remember being angry for doing horribly on many tests in college but I can’t seem to remember most of them even though I started college merely four years ago.
Here’s another spin: emotions are relative to every case. For example, if you received an 85 on an exam, how happy are you? Compare that simulated happiness with the happiness you might experience after hearing that 85 was the highest grade. Did it vary or was the happiness about the same? What if you got a 100? Wouldn’t you be happier with the 100 than the 85?
Again, let’s say you got a 65 on an exam. You would be angry at yourself for not doing better but what if a friend of yours got the same grade or the average on the exam was a 60? Wouldn’t you be less angry at yourself? What if you got a 40, would you be even more angry?
Now, you might ask: “happiness and anger is the ‘black and white’ of emotions.” As in, you’re either happy or you’re angry and there is no way someone can mistaken happiness for anger and vice versa. So what about other emotions like sadness and love? How can such complicated emotions be flaunted as if there is an absolute certainty for them?
I guess I’m just trying to state that complex emotional certainties are very difficult to come by. From the standpoint of having (or at least attempted to) consoled enough number of close friends, I know enough to realize that it’s something that can easily influence you for various reasons. It pains me to see someone think/say that they are absolutely positively certain of an emotion that no one is meant to be sure about; when this happens, red flags always goes up for me.
Of course, you might think (and I can admit to the fact) that I don’t have much personal experience with the most complicated of emotions but this is probably because I fear it. Emotions are scary things. Emotions control you. Fight or flight? No, you can’t fight it thinking you can win because you can’t. You can’t run away from it forever because you’ll have to face it sooner or later.
The only real thing you can do is to dutifully respect it. That is all I can hope to ask for.
I admit that some of the examples I listed above are completely random and useless but I guess that’s another point, emotions can’t be exemplified. They can’t be taught. Every emotional justification is as honest and factual as a random variable without normalization.
