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It's strange how our world categorizes and pigeon holes everyone into a certain type. There is the thinking type, and the feeling type...and fun kinda person/or a serious sort, an easy going dude or a high strung man, everyone labeled according to their reactions and the feelings that they evoke in others.
That is the point of this bit of writing today. Feelings. The associations the word evokes in our times are the issue for me. The images of well grown kids resenting a little less physical comfort, or folks with every opportunity at their disposal who commit dastardly acts because their "feelings were hurt". Those issues are societal ills. They have nothing to do with honest to goodness feelings.
Feelings are important. Not so one can wait for them to be hurt so they can complain about the world at large. Not so that we can generate even more politically correct non-statements to avoid trampling on the over coddled sensitivities of a random species of fruit fly. No. Feelings are guide posts. To me at least. They let me know when something is off kilter, when someone is off kilter. The happiness of knowing something is as it should be, the anger that comes from understanding cruelty, unfairness, and atrocity...the love that comes with synchronicity, the dislike of what our body cannot tolerate...or the likes and dislikes that make each of us unique.
These separate us from robots, psychopaths and anyone who would happily inflict pain without feeling pain themselves.
I am told even more often than before that feelings are devoid of any logic. How do seemingly intelligent people make such statements? How do researchers go into the neurophysiological reactions involved in feeling "happy", "sad", "love" or "lust" and make blanket assumptions on a species that operates on so many levels? A whole bunch of narcissists then take those blanket assumptions, detach themselves even more from the things that make us all humans and turn every honest emotion into a joke.
Are we just our reactions? Or are we just our thoughts? Why are we required to operate on one, and rationalize the other? Who benefits from such logical, emotion free interaction? Are we all diplomats working in a high pressure setting trying to set the world right? Or are we all a bundle of feelings without thought to define them?
I cannot imagine thinking without emotion/feelings/sentiment. Sure there are times that we "put our feelings aside". We try to grow in spite of ourselves, and if it were not for those feelings, we would not know that we were limited. A excess of feeling not reined in by thought can cause as much destruction as thought far removed from feelings. Everything that forces one over the other makes us live a lie.
Thought and feeling must go hand in hand. Each providing depth to the other, and each giving us reason to "be"...meaning live, want, eat well, reach for better things, better ourselves, get out of our particular hell etc.
I'll be a sentimental goose anytime.
*Image 1: Colorful Dove by digitalart through www.freedigitalphotos.net
**Image 2 : Silhouette Goose Flying by Vlado through www.freedigitalphotos.net
It's strange how our world categorizes and pigeon holes everyone into a certain type. There is the thinking type, and the feeling type...and fun kinda person/or a serious sort, an easy going dude or a high strung man, everyone labeled according to their reactions and the feelings that they evoke in others.
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| *Image 1 |
Feelings are important. Not so one can wait for them to be hurt so they can complain about the world at large. Not so that we can generate even more politically correct non-statements to avoid trampling on the over coddled sensitivities of a random species of fruit fly. No. Feelings are guide posts. To me at least. They let me know when something is off kilter, when someone is off kilter. The happiness of knowing something is as it should be, the anger that comes from understanding cruelty, unfairness, and atrocity...the love that comes with synchronicity, the dislike of what our body cannot tolerate...or the likes and dislikes that make each of us unique.
These separate us from robots, psychopaths and anyone who would happily inflict pain without feeling pain themselves.
I am told even more often than before that feelings are devoid of any logic. How do seemingly intelligent people make such statements? How do researchers go into the neurophysiological reactions involved in feeling "happy", "sad", "love" or "lust" and make blanket assumptions on a species that operates on so many levels? A whole bunch of narcissists then take those blanket assumptions, detach themselves even more from the things that make us all humans and turn every honest emotion into a joke.
Are we just our reactions? Or are we just our thoughts? Why are we required to operate on one, and rationalize the other? Who benefits from such logical, emotion free interaction? Are we all diplomats working in a high pressure setting trying to set the world right? Or are we all a bundle of feelings without thought to define them?
 |
| **Image 2 |
Thought and feeling must go hand in hand. Each providing depth to the other, and each giving us reason to "be"...meaning live, want, eat well, reach for better things, better ourselves, get out of our particular hell etc.
I'll be a sentimental goose anytime.
*Image 1: Colorful Dove by digitalart through www.freedigitalphotos.net
**Image 2 : Silhouette Goose Flying by Vlado through www.freedigitalphotos.net
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