Emotions are hard. There’s no easy way to master an emotion, or even a consistent way to practice them. They all come on a whim and leave whenever they feel like, but not when you want them to. You can have too much of one emotion, or too little of another. Despite their numerous flaws, they’re essential to being human. Individuals who try to detach from their emotions in an attempt to be logical are often called heartless, or robotic. However, above all else, emotions are horrifying.
In life, we often seek out things that we can control, our career, who our friends are, what we choose to eat, etc. When we lose that control over aspects of our lives, it causes stress. So when our reality matches with the emotion we are feeling, everything is fine. When our reality is different from the emotion we feel, there’s a lingering sense of wrongness about it. In a video by Day9TV on Youtube, Sean Plott talks about emotions as something that are inherently separate from our reality. For example, you can be having an awful day, feeling upset or sad, despite having wonderful things happen to you, like getting a raise or accomplishing a goal.
There is often this belief that when good things happen, we should feel good about them. Yet, as I stated previously, emotions are flawed and are inconsistent. We cannot and should not rely on them to match our reality. How you feel about any given situation may not always match the reality of it. This is especially apparent in depression where even on a “good” day, there are still negative emotions that linger and overpower any positivity that reality tries to present.
Even if emotions are reality are separated, they do often influence one another. If something good happens, it can cause positive emotions. If you feel negative emotions, it can cause something bad to happen (See people who are hangry for an example). I try my best to surround myself with positive atmospheres on a regular basis to combat the continuous flood of negative emotions that I feel on a regular basis. I get involved in my community, I joined a charity, I spend time with friends which are all things that should make me feel happy, but it doesn’t. What I am attempting to do is present opportunities for myself and my emotions.
Reality can influence emotions, but cannot guarantee an emotion. I surround myself with positive activity because even if for a second after doing something good, there is a moment where I allow my emotions the opportunity to feel a positive emotion. Even if I never feel the positive emotions, I’ve made a positive change and that’s honestly one of the few reasons I still try.
Like the worse kind of fishing you can imagine, I throw bait continuously waiting for a bite.
And I wait.
And I wait.
I desperately wait for any kind of bite, and throw bait after bait. I guess the point of all this, is that after all this time, I’ve become a master baiter.
DeMantic 