Posts Tagged Emotion
Smart as Hell Revisited
Posted by Carl in Essays, Finding Purpose on March 28, 2011
Time goes by in a way that fools me and then it is not gone. It’s right in my fucking driveway.
Lately I have had a fatalistic feeling of being able to do nothing but wrong. People give me feedback that supports this evaluation. It is odd.
If I told you that I watch every step before my foot goes down, the exaggeration would not be too thick. This would be marvelous risk prevention if it worked. When I watch my steps today, it does not save me from stepping in the bad yesterday. The good I step in today might well be bad tomorrow. This brings on a full Alice-in-Wonderland feel. When time or learning do not matter, I become this massive, chaotic balloon with no chance of ever coming back to society, perhaps not flying into the sun but more flying so badly as to be permanently lost.
They tell me lately that I allow my emotions to wipe out the rational reactions to situations and events. It’s true that I am Read the rest of this entry »
The Paralyzing Fear of Truth
Posted by Carl in Essays, Finding Purpose on January 8, 2011
This is another in the Who I Want to Be series, which seems to have gained a weekly rhythm. It’s a bit long, but if you are interested in pursuit of truth over the power of emotions and the pursuit of rationality over existential fatalism, it might prove interesting.
I’ve been thinking about the topic of truth for three solid days, a very complicated type of truth. This began with R telling B1 and me that B1 has no problem with seeing the truth even when she has powerful emotions; whereas, my emotions tend to be my truth. My natural reaction is a defensive one, to claim that there is no way that I am an emotional animal. I want to believe that I am smart enough not to let my emotions run my life or ruin my life. I’m smart enough to know that my emotions are only a psycho-physical reaction to how I perceive the world. My perceptions and the subsequent emotions can be various shades of right or wrong, but I can’t control them. I can control my reaction to the emotions.
R asked me and B1 the same question, “Do you think you can control whether or not you fall in love?” B1 answered quite quickly that she could. Read the rest of this entry »
stillfugue 