Ahhhhh Blogger is crazy. I had a post all written up, but then the service went down and I was unable to post it. I originally had a post about a free iTunes download of When the President Talks to God by Bright Eyes, but I lost it. Its so hard to try and remember much less re-create what I wrote so now I'm just gonna have to write about something else. Anyway, check out the song.
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I realized recently how difficult I often find it to translate my emotional response to what someone is saying into actual words. Even in little things, like general banter, where I feel a response, accurately translating it to words is a real struggle. It seems that by putting into words the response I feel I give my internal emotional response, my true response, too much definition. It's sharp and I often fear (maybe irrationally) I'm misleading the other person. Of course, its certainly no one's fault but my own if the recieving end of the conversation gets poor transmission. But what can you do? The world moves in real time, with hardly a moment to waste. Practice is certainly useful, and building a history with someone certainly fine tunes accurate lines of communication. But ultimately, creating an exactly accurate response takes time and requires more words than can be spoken in a mutually expressive conversation.* Hence, blogging.
I suspect many people feel this way and it follows then that alot is lost as what happens behind our eyes transitions to what happens on our lips. Extending what has so far been established in this post, and attempting to give it some redeeming sheen, it seems useful to give the benefit of the doubt to everyone you converse with. To assume that what they say, more often than not and however close to the truth, is not exactly what they mean. Their internal experience is theirs alone, and more importantly, theirs to share to whatever degree they wish and are capable of. Maybe some people do really express exactly what they feel, but how can you know? Or maybe it's just that I'm male.
I know that when witnesses to crimes give verbal details of the criminal it distorts the image in their minds eye and they have a harder time picking that person out of a lineup. Emotions reside in the same part of the brain, so its reasonable to assume that by defining your emotions verbally and outloud you change them. Take into consideration the influence that society has on you and what you say and its no leap at all to believe that by verbalizing you construct your emotional reality, bending it to what you may believe society wants you too feel. That sounds an awful lot like I'm saying you shouldn't talk about it, whatever it is. But what I'm really trying (trying!) to get at is the idea that you are not your emotions. Who you are is deeper than that, it has to be, and revealing that person to another can only happen in time. We are emotional beings certainly, but we are beings first and emotional second.
An easy example: in The Moral Animal by Robert Wright, the author calls out that heady emotional kind of love as self-delusion. He is not saying that love is not real. He says just the opposite, that in fact this first kind of love is vibrant, powerful and very very real. But like so many other things, it has a purpose. He claims it is natural selection's way of blinding us to our partners's faults and thereby encouraging procreation. He goes further and says that inevitably, this kind of love dwindles and what is left is a love that resides not as a surface level emotional entity, but as a deep respect for the other person that equals the respect for one's self.
While the the first kind of love is a thrill ride, it is not sustainable because it requires so much energy. Luckily, it lends itself beautifully to that which makes us all so very human: choice. As this high, exciting love begins to dissipate it is replaced by a decision that must be made. Do you stay with this person, do you truly commit? Or do you cut and run, seeking that exciting love for another round? And choosing to stay, choosing to re-commit everyday as you surely must, is where the second love lurks. It is below the emotional surface, down closer to where the real person exists. That you must choose it, day after day, over and over, makes it more than love: it makes it loving.
*To me, the best way to disarm this dynamic would be to recognize it. So here we are.
About
- Zac
- Portland, Oregon, United States
- I'm blogging exclusively now at www.zacbenjamin.com
2 comments:
Words are often too proper to adequetly express emotion because emotion is more on a primal level. Words are man made, emotion is not. Because an emotional response is just that - emotion - and trying to put it to words reduces it because words have a set definition, and emotion is not something that can easily be defined. I have been put into situations where my response is just too strong and only a sound can come anywhere near portraying what i am feeling. And over time my friends have come to recognize the 'alana sigh' and other similar things. This is just my way of trying to truly express myself, because as this is proving words do me no justice.
But emotions are not me? I am a being first? But what makes me a being? I think that emotions are very closely related to who we are, who I am. The two are so closely intertwined, that you can not really Be without either of them. Like I cry at movies when I truly feel them, when what they say speaks to me, in my head, in my heart. I know it is irrational to cry at something that isn't based in reality, but my emotional response is just too great. My emotions are an important part of me, what am I without them?
And sorry but your post got an emotional response from me, so I had to try to respond.
hey alana! thanks for the reponse. As i think i too often do, i left out some seriously crucial explaining. The idea is that you experience your emotions, but you are not them. Like riding a rollercoaster, as intertwined with the machine as you may be, you are not actually the rollercoaster. Another way of putting it would be to say that who you are is the observer. You 'watch' your emotions, engage them, and experience them. But who is watching the observer? An even deeper observer, of course, one further removed from the emotional experience. If you continue this line of thinking eventually you must reach a core where the true person resides, where we are all the same.
I heard recently of a study that monitored brain activity in meditation gurus as they meditated. It found that the deeper the meditative state they achieved the more a particular section of the brain turned off. This momentarily inactive section where your brain tells you what part of your surroundings are you and what part are the outside world. Its the section of the brain that keeps you from bumping into things all the time. The theory is that this phenomenon is where the feeling of oneness so often spoken of by gurus comes from.
Though inexperienced myself, my understanding of meditation is that it is the art of not attatching yourself to your thoughts. To in effect, observe them without engaging them or following them down a path. Taking all this together adds up to one clear conclusion: at the core, no one is there emotions.
I think you are right on about the whole 'words being made up' thing. And mmm hmmm, good movies are gooooood. I know I didnt answer many of your questions directly, but thats almost entirely because I have no answers.
Thanks again for posting!
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